Miraculous Arctic Rescue

This headline was from the Nunavut News/North on Monday, December 15, 2008

Australian-born Oliver Edwards, 25, (pictured above) who lives in Sweden and Swedish citizen Troels Hansen, 45, were midway through a trip from Ohio in the United States to Sweden on Sunday, December 7, 2009. This particular leg of the journey was en route from Wabush, N. L., to Iqaluit, Nunavut. They were in the southern part of Baffin Island, when they managed to send a mayday call minutes before their second engine failed.

The men made a controlled crash landing on an ice floe about 160 kilometres south of Iqaluit at about 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 7, 2008. They exited the plane through a broken window just in time to watch the aircraft sink into the freezing waters. They took refuge on a more stable ice floe nearby, and endured 18 hours in temperatures as low as -20 C.

The pair, who lost track of time, concentrated on keeping their morale up and preventing the onset of shock. But their hopes were dashed when a rescue plane circling nearby failed to find them. Mr. Edwards said it was "a lonely feeling" standing on the ice sheets in the dark with nothing but their clothes.

They were wearing neoprene survival suits and life-jackets, but they had lost their life-raft when the plane sank rapidly.

They held out through the night, struggling and fighting the cold. In the morning, the light came, but no aircraft was in sight. The pair resolved to "hop across the ice sheets" to the shore (about 20 kilometres away), since they could not survive another night on the ice.

In the end, it was a shrimp fishing vessel out of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, the Atlantic Enterprise captained by Canadian Bo Mortensen, that picked up the two men the following morning.

This was the scene from on board the Atlantic Enterprise with the two men were spotted on the ice floe from a distance! As the boat got a bit closer, the men started waving like crazy to get their attention, and then they could see the boat heading their way, tooting its horn.

When the boat's captain, Bo Mortensen, lowered the dinghy on the boat's side for the men to hop into, Mr. Edwards said that "the relief just took me into another world."

Bo Mortensen said that Edwards and Hansen were overjoyed when they were brought on board his boat after having been stranded on the ice in temperatures that dipped to -20 C overnight. "They were crying and all that. They were happy to see the boat."

Here is Oliver Edwards, 25, at the Qikiqtani General Hospital in Iqaluit the next day, where the men were taken by helicopter. The men were in good shape, but were a little frostbitten in their feet.

The people of Iqaluit rallied to their support. "Although they do not live here, we are very grateful that they survived," said city councillor Simon Nattaq through a translator. While still in the hospital, local businesses, including the Frobisher Inn and North-Mart, provided the survivors with clothing and offered them food and lodging for the rest of their stay.

"They had nothing but the survival suits on their back," said Carlos Montenegro, general manager at the Frobisher Inn. "We felt as a community we should come together to help these people."

Paul Sherman, assistant general manager at the Inn, was amazed by what the men had gone through. "It's something that I couldn't even fathom myself being in that circumstance," he said.

Their rescue is enough to make a believer out of a skeptic. These men were brought to a state of complete helplessness in themselves, and could not save themselves. Attitudes of "self-sufficiency" and "independence" will not see one through a crisis of this nature.

But the words of faith give hope in the midst of such a crisis. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning!" (Psalm 30:5).