All news

Life of 4 oilrig crewmen out of danger

They have strong overcooling symptoms, running temperature, but no hypothermia symptoms. All four oilrig crewmen are undergoing treatment at the intensive therapy ward

VLADIVOSTOK, December 19 (Itar-Tass) —— The life of four oilrig crewmen, who were saved and brought to the Nogliki hospital after the Kolskaya oilrig wrecked in the Sea of Okhotsk, is out of danger.

“They have strong overcooling symptoms, running temperature, but no hypothermia symptoms,” a source in the surgery ward of the hospital told Itar-Tass on Monday. All four oilrig crewmen are undergoing treatment at the intensive therapy ward. Crewmen from the Kolskaya oilrig Muscovite Ivan Mishinev and three Sakhalin specialists – Sergei Grauma (Yuzhno-Sakhlinsk), Valery Zagidulin (Korsakov) and Alexander Kovalenko (Okha) are undergoing treatment. They are aged from 30 to 35 years.

Some 67 crewmen were working onboard the offshore oilrig Kolskaya. 14 of them were saved. The Magadan icebreaker, the Georgy Foyer tanker and the Smith Sakhalin supply ship are searching for missing crewmen in the oilrig wreck area. The Yuri Tarapunov ship and the Atlas rescue ship, which are already approaching the oilrig wreck area, are to join the search operation in a few hours.

A helicopter Mi-8, an airplane An-24 from the Far Eastern air rescue centre and two helicopters Mi-8 of the Sakhalin-based Aviashelf Company will go on an air reconnaissance party at the dawn. These two helicopters were involved in the search operation on Sunday, one of them delivered four saved oilrig crewmen to Nogliki. Both helicopters are on standby for another search mission, but the weather is foil in northern Sakhalin. The clouds are 100 metres thick, the horizontal visibility is 1,500 metres. The helicopters cannot fly in such hard weather conditions, the flight controlling service of the Nogliki airport reported.

The oilrig Kolskaya sank 200 metres off the eastern coast of Sakhalin.