A Czech tourist suffered slight injuries when a polar bear attacked him in a tent on an Arctic island off Norway on Thursday (March 19), the eve of a total solar eclipse that has drawn thousands of visitors.
Jakub Moravec, camping with five other tourists on a skiing and snow scooter trip, was flown by helicopter to hospital in Longyearbyen, the main settlement on Svalbard, with injuries to his arm, chest and face.
He said he awoke to find the bear in the tent and fought to fend it off before a colleague drove the bear away by shooting and injuring it.
“We slept inside the tent and now (suddenly) the polar bear was inside and pulled me out of the tent and I was inside sleeping bag and it was very good for me because it was protection, small,” he said.
The bear, which had got through a fence put up by the tourists around their camp, was later shot dead by rescue crews.
Moravec said he only felt scared afterwards — at the time, his thoughts were only to protect his head.
He hoped to be out of hospital in time to see the eclipse on Friday morning.
“I’m a photographer I was going to take some pictures of the eclipse tomorrow,” he said.
The Norwegian Arctic islands of Svalbard, about 1,300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole, and the Faroe Islands to the south are the only places on land from which viewers will be able to see the moon totally block the sun on Friday.
A partial eclipse will be visible across parts of Africa, Europe and Asia, briefly disrupting production of solar power in Europe as the sun dims.
Svalbard has warned tourists of the risks of bears and of bone-chilling temperatures, expected to be around -18 degrees Celsius (zero Fahrenheit) on Friday, with partly cloudy skies.
The archipelago is expecting about 2,000 visitors for the eclipse, on top of about 2,500 residents.
A bear killed a British teenager on Svalbard in 2011, the most recent fatality. On average, three bears a year are shot in self-defense by people on Svalbard.
(Reuters)
