الرئيسية
MOSCOW (AP) — Rescue workers are searching for 49 men in freezing,
remote waters off Russia's east coast after their oil rig capsized and
sank amid fierce storms.
By nightfall Sunday, four men had been
confirmed dead, 14 others had been plucked alive from the churning, icy
waters by the ship that had been towing the Kolskaya drilling platform.
But the search for the remaining men was hampered by freezing
temperatures, a driving blizzard and strong winds.
Dmitry
Dmitriyenko, governor of the Murmansk region in Russia's north-west
where 33 of the men come from, urged friends and families not to lose
hope late Sunday, but admitted the chance of the men surviving in the
one degree Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit) water is approaching zero.
"This is a terrible disaster which took the crew unawares," he said in a statement. "But there is still a chance."
The
Emergencies Ministry said that 67 people had been aboard the platform
as it was being towed about 200 kilometers (120 miles) off the coast of
Sakhalin, a large island just north of Japan in the Sea of Okhotsk in
the western Pacific Ocean that until the late 19th century had been the
Russian Empire's most remote penal colony.
remote waters off Russia's east coast after their oil rig capsized and
sank amid fierce storms.
By nightfall Sunday, four men had been
confirmed dead, 14 others had been plucked alive from the churning, icy
waters by the ship that had been towing the Kolskaya drilling platform.
But the search for the remaining men was hampered by freezing
temperatures, a driving blizzard and strong winds.
Dmitry
Dmitriyenko, governor of the Murmansk region in Russia's north-west
where 33 of the men come from, urged friends and families not to lose
hope late Sunday, but admitted the chance of the men surviving in the
one degree Celsius (33.8 Fahrenheit) water is approaching zero.
"This is a terrible disaster which took the crew unawares," he said in a statement. "But there is still a chance."
The
Emergencies Ministry said that 67 people had been aboard the platform
as it was being towed about 200 kilometers (120 miles) off the coast of
Sakhalin, a large island just north of Japan in the Sea of Okhotsk in
the western Pacific Ocean that until the late 19th century had been the
Russian Empire's most remote penal colony.