The Government will look into a new station on Jan Mayen
The buildings for people and equipment at Jan Mayen were set up in 1960. In the state budget for next year, it is proposed to allocate funds for the construction of a new building.
The buildings that house people and equipment at the Norwegian station on the island in the Atlantic Ocean were meant to last for ten years, writes TV2. Now they have been in use for 57 years, but in the state budget for 2018 it is proposed to spend NOK five million to project a new main building on Jan Mayen.
– It is necessary both to ensure Norwegian presence, but also to provide those who are up there with good living and working conditions, says Minister of Transport, Ketil Solvik-Olsen (Frp) to the channel.
Solvik-Olsen says the process of renewing the buildings takes time.
– Such a process takes a few years from you start until it’s finished. But now we have signaled that the work will start, and then I think many cannot wait for the building that has been in use for 50 years overtime to be replaced, says the Minister for Transport.
Major Torgeir Madsen, Jan Mayen’s Operation Coordinator, has together with other employees at the station patched and fixed the buildings during their stay. He says it’s urgent to get something new in place.
TV2 writes that, among other things, rot has been discovered in the walls, and some of the pylons the buildings are standing on, have rotted away. The pylons that are possible to reach have been replaced, but it has not been possible to gain access to the middle of the buildings.
Jan Mayen is a volcanic island in the North Atlantic, 950 kilometers from the mainland of Norway and 600 kilometers north of Iceland. There has been continuous Norwegian activity on the island since the first meteorological station was established in 1921.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
