PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY (Russia), Aug 6: Russian, British and US specialists raced on Saturday to save seven sailors trapped in a mini-submarine on the Pacific Ocean floor before they ran out of oxygen.
As the undersea drama entered a second day, a Russian ship carrying British rescue equipment left port and was due to arrive at the accident site within hours, a senior Russian naval official said.
Similar equipment, including remotely controlled deep sea Super Scorpio robots airlifted to the region from the United States, was also expected at the scene soon as an extraordinary multinational submarine rescue mission gathered pace.
With foreign assistance on its way, the Russian navy meanwhile pursued efforts to haul both the Priz AS-28 minisub and the underwater obstruction in which it was entangled nearer the surface.
“The cables are in, they are being joined and they are preparing for the lifting,” Pacific fleet commander Admiral Viktor Fyodorov told NTV television. If successful, divers would then be able to go to the rescue, he said.
The mini-submarine — itself meant for rescue work — has been trapped since Thursday 190 metres below the surface about 70 kilometres off the coast of Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula region.
Air supplies on the 13.5-metre mini-sub were likely to last until 0100 GMT Monday, Mr Fyodorov said in the latest of several contradictory estimates by top officials.
British and US teams flew to the regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky with Scorpio and Super Scorpio unmanned submersibles, capable of operating at great depths and armed with cable-cutters.
Russian officials said the Soviet-designed mini-sub was caught up during military exercises Thursday in an underwater coastal surveillance apparatus, itself kept in place by huge anchors. The accident had at first been blamed on an abandoned fishing net.
The commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet said however he was not concerned about foreign naval presence in a secretive zone of Russia’s coastal territorial waters where the surveillance system was installed.
“There are secret zones in this region that are off-limits, such as entry to a submarine base,” Interfax news agency quoted Admiral Viktor Fyodorov as saying. “But I see no particular problem with participation of foreign rescuers in the operation.”
As the clock wound down on air reserves, the stranded submariners took emergency precautions and families on shore kept an agonising vigil.—AFP
