MOSCOW AP A Russian helicopter swooped down through a blizzard in the dim light of the brief Arctic day Tuesday to rescue a TV crew that had been stranded for weeks on a remote island by bad weather. The helicopter evacuated the three-man crew which included a Russian a Japanese and an Australian who had been making a documentary on polar bears. The crew was airlifted from Wrangel Island to the port of Pevek the Ministry of Emergency Situations said. ``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.'' The rescue helicopter had lifted off from Pevek at 11:30 a.m. local time 1130 Monday GMT the height of the Arctic day that never gets brighter than twilight. The temperature on Wrangle Island has been around minus 30 Celsius minus 22 Fahrenheit with unusually bad weather. ``We were filming polar bears and other animals'' the Russian member of the team Nikita Ovsyannikov told Russian television channel NTV. ``On Oct. 15 we completed the work and a flight was ordered to take us back.'' ``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 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. ``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.'' Crawford said his company had been hired to conduct the rescue by the filmmakers' employer Natural History Pty. Ltd. in New Zealand. The film crew arrived on Wrangel Island on Sept. 2 and intended to leave Oct. 15 but were delayed by bad weather. The weather also prevented the Emergency Situations Ministry from sending a rescue helicopter. The three were holed up in a cabin on the island's northeast coast about 550 kilometers 350 miles west of Alaska. Their food supplies were running out raising concerns about the men. Residents of a village about 130 kilometers 80 miles from the hut attempted to take emergency supplies to the crew but were defeated by bad weather. Emergency officials earlier offered to try to rescue the crew by snow tractor but the three reportedly turned down the offer because they would have been forced to leave most of their equipment behind ORT television reported. Kobayashi is an employee of NHK the Japanese television company. The Australian is cameraman John McGuiness. pvs/ad/ren APW19981201.1377.txt.body.html APW19981201.0118.txt.body.html