Rescuers to practice search for missing foreigners on Arctic coast
© RIA Novosti. Vladimir Smirnov

Rescuers to practice search for missing foreigners on Arctic coast

Large-scale rescue exercises will begin near Dudinka, Krasnoyarsk Territory, on Tuesday to rehearse the search for missing foreign tourists on Russia's Arctic coast, RIA Novosti reported.

"According to the drill scenario, nine foreign tourists taking a ride on snowmobiles fail to answer a radio call and later send an SOS signal," an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said. The exercises will take place in the Taimyrsky District on April 12-20, he added. 

More than 100 natural and human-caused emergencies occur in the Russian Arctic every year, the spokesman said. The number of human-induced emergencies is on the rise, dominated by transport accidents (30 percent) with explosions and fires caused by technological equipment failures coming second (24 percent).   

The Emergencies Ministry is planning to build a total of 10 major emergency rescue centers in the Arctic: in Dudinka, Murmansk, Naryan-Mar, Arkhangelsk, Nadym, Vorkuta, Tiksi, Pevek, Anadyr and the town of Provideniya. Four of them ‒ in Murmansk, Naryan-Mar, Arkhangelsk and Dudinka ‒ have already been put into operation.

The centers will ensure that rescue forces stay on constant alert and are ready to immediately respond to any emergency in the Arctic. These will be highly mobile forces equipped with aircraft, watercraft, off-road vehicles and universal emergency-rescue and fire-fighting equipment.