Russia's first arctic rescue center to open this year

The first emergency rescue center on Russia’s Arctic coast will open in August, the head of the Russian emergencies ministry’s firefighting and rescue department said on Tuesday. “The first center will open this year in August in the city of Dudinka in northern Krasnoyarsk Territory,” Maxim Vladimirov said. Russian emergencies minister Sergei Shoigu announced last year the ministry is planning to build ten centers in the Russian Arctic coast to respond to a possible man-made disaster. The centers will combine meteorological, rescue and borderguard duties. The centers are to be open by 2015, with construction costs estimated at 910 million rubles ($31 million). They will employ about a thousand of people in total. Three centers will be built in Russia’s Far Eastern Chukotka Peninsula, others will be based in the cities of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Naryan-Mar, Vorkuta, Nadym, and Tiksi. Russia’s Arctic zone houses nuclear power plants, naval bases for nuclear icebreakers and nuclear vessels of the Russian Navy and other potentially dangerous industrial assets.