A Russian rescue team has flown to the Norwegian Spitzbergen archipelago today to prepare for the evacuation of a group of scientists after a 10-metre high ice wall collapsed on their base and left them stranded.
"We are planning to start the operation around 8 a.m. Moscow time, but that could be adjusted depending on visibility," Interfax agency quoted a spokeswoman for Russia's weather research centre as saying.
She said rescuers expected the operation to take around seven hours and added current conditions were favourable.
"There is good visibility there and it is about minus 25 degrees Celsius, which is considered good weather for those parts."
Rescuers must pinpoint the base in an almost featureless landscape where the sun manages only a thin twilight for five or six hours a day.
"Everybody has just one task - to rescue people from the ice floe, and of course to save some of their equipment if possible," Igor Lavrenyuk, deputy commander of the local aviation squadron, told state television.
The scientists' Severny Polyus-32 base, currently about 450 miles off Spitzbergen, was almost completely destroyed in the freak accident on Wednesday.
The station was founded on the permanently moving Arctic ice last April and has drifted clockwise around the North Pole.
"The place is at our maximum flying range, devoid of reference points and completely white. But the main thing is to find people," Lavrenyuk said. "One must bear in mind no one has yet done anything of this kind before."
A nuclear-powered ice-breaker, the Arktika, is also heading to the station, and hopes to reach it within five days in case the air rescue fails, Itar-Tass news agency said.