Meteorologists say polar bears have had them trapped for two weeks on a remote Russian island weather outpost in the Arctic and they've run out of flares to scare them away.
The weather outpost at Arkhangelsk, on one of the Arctic Izvestiy TSIK Islands, is a week away by boat, but a dozen or so polar bears have had no problem finding the location, said NBC News.
The five Russian meteorologists holed up in their weather station have abandoned their outdoors tasks, such as taking sea measurments twice a day. Some of the polar bears have even taken to sleeping right outside the windows of the weather station.
"The bears live in the Arctic, you know — we can't ban them from hanging around," station supervisor Vasily Shevchenko told NBC News via satellite phone. "Worst case, the station chief has a gun."
The Siberian Times said it is illegal to shoot and kill polar bears but residents in the area have been given rubber bullets and flare pistols to help scare them away.
"This is dangerous," said one meteorologist, according to the Siberian Times. "These people need to walk a few hundred meters (away). … So we go, your head rotating 360 degrees. Yesterday we came out and a bear was near the house. Three times our engineer fired a small flare pistol and the bear was not even scared. We managed to scare it off with a flare, but not far."
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