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At Magallanes Clinic in Punta Arenas, nurse Mauricio Seron told The Associated Press that a female patient “with a gastric problem” was the sicker of the two. He said the second was a male patient who had suffered a heart attack. The woman was carried in on a stretcher and the man walked in on his own accord.

In a hectic two days of flying, the rescue team flew nearly 5,000 km roundtrip from Britain’s Rothera station to the South Pole and returned to Rothera with the sick workers Wednesday afternoon, said Peter West, spokesman for the National Science Foundation. The workers were transferred to a second Canadian-owned Twin Otter plane for the flight to Punta Arenas.

At Rothera, the temperature was a balmy -2.5 C Wednesday afternoon. That was toasty compared to the South Pole, where it was -60 C in the morning.

West confirmed that the operation, coming right after the equinox, was the darkest and coldest of all past missions to the South Pole for medical evacuation. He said that the departure of the two workers should not affect the functioning of the base.

Before they left, there were 48 people — 39 men and nine women — at the Amundsen-Scott station for the winter.

Photo by Joel Estay / AP

Normally, planes don’t go to the U.S. polar outpost from February to October because of the dangers of flying in the pitch-dark and cold. The first day of winter in the Southern Hemisphere was Monday, and the sun will not rise at the South Pole until the first day of spring in September.