Three international film makers were plucked to safety from an Arctic wilderness island Tuesday after surviving six weeks of blizzards while fast running out of food.
``Everybody is healthy and in good humor,'' Nikita Ovsyannikov, a Russian wildlife expert on the team, told Reuters by telephone from the town of Pevek on the Russian mainland, about 350 km (200 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.
``We were in a warm cabin with enough fuel, quite safe and everybody was healthy. The only real problem was that we were running out of food.''
Ovsyannikov, Australian cameraman Rory McGuinness and Japanese producer Tatsuhiko Kobayashi were rescued by helicopter from remote Wrangel Island, where they had been trapped since mid-October, waiting for a break in the weather.
``Basically our health is good but we are thinner,'' said Kobayashi. ``I lost eight kg (18 lbs) and now weigh 65 or 68 kg.''
``Of course I am very glad,'' said the Japanese, who went to Wrangel in late September. ``It was very cold...and we had packed just a few clothes for autumn,'' he told Reuters.
The three men, shooting a film on polar bears, became stranded in their wooden hut as winter set in. The temperature was about minus 20 Celsius (minus four Fahrenheit) but the wind chill factor made it feel much colder.
They had planned to go to Moscow Tuesday but poor weather again delayed their departure, now expected Wednesday.
Ovsyannikov said the few dozen residents of the nearest settlement, about 120 km (75 miles) away, had been forced by the harsh weather to abandon an attempt to reach the men by snowmobile.
``We were working as long as there was film stock left, which was mid-November,'' he said. ``In the last few weeks we were just waiting.''
The Russian rescue helicopter had been ready for weeks to fly from Cape Schmidt on the mainland to evacuate the three men, but fierce winds and snow had kept it grounded.
Despite their physical isolation, the three had remained in radio contact with local villagers and could call the mainland or make Internet contact through a satellite phone.
`Just imagine -- even in our technological age, they fell into a situation like a Jack London novel, with polar nights in an isolated house, all quiet, with just the three of them,'' Ovsyannikov's wife Irina Menyushina said in Moscow.
But she told Reuters: ``For Nikita the main thing is always not to lose one's head and not fall into panic...So I wasn't worried. It was only a question of time.''
As winter set in and the sea began to freeze near their two-room cabin, the men developed a daily routine.
``I was cooking for the guys and they were washing dishes and supplying water from snow,'' said Ovsyannikov, who had been on the island, about 500 km (300 miles) from Alaska, since July.
He said the only supplies left were rice, some grain called grechka, beans, sugar and tea. Meat had run out a week before.
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