MOSCOW AP Amid snow squalls whipping across a desolate Arctic landscape a Russian helicopter emerged from the dusky winter light Tuesday and rescued a TV crew stranded on a remote island for weeks by bad weather. The three-man crew a Russian a Japanese and an Australian who had been making a documentary on polar bears had three days' worth of food left when the helicopter airlifted them from Wrangel Island to the port of Pevek the Ministry of Emergency Situations said. They had waited for weeks for the skies to clear up enough so that a helicopter could land. ``On Oct. 15 we completed the work and a flight was ordered to take us back'' researcher Nikita Ovsyannikov told the Russian television channel NTV. ``But this year the weather conditions were very unusual: heavy long cyclones the weather was constantly bad with powerful blizzards. So the flight couldn't arrive.'' The rescue helicopter lifted off from Pevek at 11:30 a.m. local time 2330 Monday GMT the height of the Arctic day that never gets brighter than twilight. The temperature on Wrangel Island has been around minus 30 C minus 22 F. Russia's Arctic has been particularly severe this year. A nuclear-powered ice breaking ship was stranded for several days last week unable to cut a channel for a Finnish tanker that carried badly needed fuel to residents of Russia's northeast Chukotka peninsula not far from Wrangel Island. ``It wasn't easy to find pilots'' said Dean Finlay of the international emergency company AEA International SOS. ``Also there was only a three-hour daytime window in the area and just over two hours of flight time so they had to get the window just right.'' It took the crew about an hour to load the 400 kilograms 880 pounds of equipment and film aboard. Then they traveled back in the already black Arctic night. ``It was an anxious couple of hours'' said John Hyde a television producer who helped coordinate the rescue. The Japanese crew member Tatsuhiko Kobayashi developed complications from a recent eye operation but the others were in good health Russia's ORT television reported. There were conflicting reports on who organized the rescue. Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov said the rescue was organized by his agency using an Mi-8 helicopter hired from a private airline. But AEA International SOS said it had organized the rescue according to Mark Crawford the company's spokesman in Australia. He said his company had been hired by the filmmakers' employer Natural History Pty. Ltd. in New Zealand. ``They're in fair spirits'' Crawford said of the crew. ``They're surviving of course but they were down to their last three days of food.'' The film crew arrived on Wrangel Island on Sept. 2 and intended to leave Oct. 15. As flights were delayed by bad weather the three were holed up in a cabin on the island's northeast coast about 550 kilometers 350 miles west of Alaska. Kobayashi is an employee of NHK the Japanese television company. The Australian is cameraman John McGuiness. They and Ovsyannikov were expected to fly to Moscow on Wednesday. pvs/ad/adc APW19981201.1077.txt.body.html APW19981201.0085.txt.body.html