ANCHORAGE — Making rescues in an Arctic with less ice and more ship traffic was one of the big topics of the Alaska World Affairs Council panel discussion Thursday.
Hreinn Palsson of the Embassy of Iceland in Washington D.C. says it’s time for cross-border cooperation to prepare for the opening of the Arctic.
He says search and rescue preparedness should be a top priority.
“Alaska is in the same place as the rest of us. We are all dealing with this,” Palsson said. “We are doing it through cooperation across borders.”
Palsson says the Arctic is no longer just a subject of academic study. It’s becoming a destination for expeditionary tourism.
And with more people comes more problems.
“Issues of security, issues of transportation, issues of communications,” Palsson said. “So there is security and search and rescue teams that you have to have under control.”
Lars Saunes is a retired Chief of the Norwegian Royal Navy with 29 years of Arctic naval experience.
He says being ready in the Arctic means anticipating events before they happen.
“If you look in Alaska, in this area, it’s a beautiful area and tourism is going to grow,” Saunes said. “So you need to establish enough of a presence by Coast Guard and other ships to ensure that if an accident happens, you are there,” he continued. “If you were not there, it’s already too late.”
At that point, Saunes says, you’re out of the game in the Arctic.
“Because in my opinion, if you don’t have the equipment and the trained people, you are part of the problem,” Saunes said. “You can’t just come from the outside and operate in the Arctic. It’s too harsh. It’s too difficult.”
Channel 2 asked Jon Harrison, senior administration official for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, at tonight’s panel how the U.S. plans to handle the increasing demand for search and rescue resources in the Arctic.
He said the Trump administration is surging resources to the Coast Guard, and doing everything it can to make sure they are properly resourced.
