Search Continues for Russian Helicopter
- Author: AFP
- Publish date:22/08/2003
- Section:WORLD HEADLINES
Rescuers continued to scour the dense forests of the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East, on the third day of a massive search for a missing helicopter carrying a regional governor.
Local emergency officials denied earlier reports that parts of the helicopter had been found and said only that a rescue group was investigating an oil slick that was spotted in a river on the peninsula.
The helicopter went missing on Wednesday while carrying Igor Farkhutdinov, governor of the oil-rich Sakhalin region, and other regional officials.
Officials still did not know for certain how many people were aboard the chopper, with Russian news agencies reporting that there may have been as many as 17 passengers and three crew members aboard.
Strong winds, dense clouds and heavy rain, along with uncertainty about the helicopter's exact route has hampered the massive search in the rugged wilderness of Kamchatka.
Early Friday seven helicopters and an An-26 airplane swooped low over the Kamchatka forest cover and were set to examine more closely the slopes and peaks of the surrounding mountains, rescue officials said.
Four teams of 90 rescuers each continued to comb some 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 square miles) of the area where the helicopter might have gone down, a local emergency ministry spokesman said.
As hopes for the helicopter's speedy recovery waned, the Sakhalin administration offered a reward of a million rubles (32,000 dollars/29,100 euros) to whoever finds the chopper.
"The reward will be paid to those who find the site of the helicopter's emergency landing," the Sakhalin region's acting chief administrator Ivan Malakhov said.
The helicopter went missing as Russia carried out massive naval exercises in its Far East, the largest since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Mi-8 helicopter disappeared an hour after taking off from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, on the Kamchatka peninsula. It had been heading for the town of Severo-Kurilsk, on one of the northern Kuril islands.
Along with members of his administration, Farkhutdinov had been attending a meeting of administrative officials from nine Russian and 14 Japanese cities belonging to the Mayors Association of the Far East and Siberia that opened on Tuesday at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
Radio contact with the aircraft was lost less than an hour after it took off, and officials said it may not have crossed the Kamchatka shoreline on its way to the islands.
**PHOTO CAPTION***
A Mi-8 helicopter similar to the one that is missing.