CONTACT:  Patricia Viets             FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                     2/9/96

NOAA's SEARCH AND RESCUE SYSTEM SAVES TWO PEOPLE IN ALASKA WILDERNESS

Two stranded people, one with a broken ankle and one in an out- of-gas snowmobile, were rescued from the Alaskan wilderness recently when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's search and rescue satellite system went into action after picking up a distress signal.

Robert Ningeok of Barrow, Alaska, was travelling by snowmobile from Barrow to a village 50 miles away. Severe cold weather conditions caused the gas cap on his snowmobile to shatter. But he didn't detect the problem until he ran out of fuel. Stuck in the wilderness and realizing his dangerous predicament, he activated his Personal Locator Beacon (PLB). Its signal was picked up by the COSPAS-SARSAT search and rescue system and relayed to the NOAA ground station in Fairbanks. The information was relayed to the U.S. Mission Control Center in NOAA's Suitland, Md., facility. The special coding of the beacon alerted the control center that this was an Alaska PLB, and they immediately notified Alaskan authorities.

A helicopter was dispatched from the North Slope Borough Search and Rescue Department. As the helicopter approached Ningeok's location, the pilot noticed someone else in distress. The helicopter landed and picked up a hunter with a broken ankle. It then picked up Ningeok and transported both men to Barrow.

The COSPAS-SARSAT program is an international search and rescue satellite system operated by NOAA, an agency of the Commerce Department. The COSPAS-SARSAT program uses NOAA environmental satellites equipped with Canadian and French search and rescue instruments, Russian satellites, and a network of earth stations to pick up distress signals from pilots or mariners who have crashed or become shipwrecked. Since the inception of the program 13 years ago, 5359 lives have been saved.

The COSPAS-SARSAT program was formed as a joint effort by the United States, Canada, France, and the former Soviet Union. The first satellite was launched by the Soviet Union in 1982, followed by additional Soviet and U.S. satellites. Today there are five operational satellites involved in the program and more than 30 countries are associated with COSPAS-SARSAT as ground station providers or user states. NOAA is the lead agency for the United States' participation in the system.

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