Police in Iceland call off search at collapsed ice cave
26 August 2024, 17:04
One person was killed and a second was injured in the collapse.
Police in Iceland have called off a search at a collapsed ice cave, saying they now believe no one is missing.
Icelandic authorities say they called off the search after examining the tour operator’s records and determining that all 23 people on the trip had been accounted for.
Police previously had begun the search for two people they believed were missing because they initially were told there had been 25 people on the expedition.
One person died and one person was seriously injured when an ice cave at the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in south-eastern Iceland when the incident happened shortly before 3pm on Sunday.
“A moment ago, the police field manager located at the scene announced that all the ice that was thought to have fallen on the people had been moved,” police said. “It has come to light that no one was hidden under the ice.”
Rescuers had worked by hand to cut through the remnants of the collapsed ice cave as they searched for those they had believed to be missing.
The search, which was suspended overnight when conditions made it too dangerous, had resumed at about 7am, Icelandic broadcaster RUV reported.
Video footage showed rescuers working inside two large craters surrounded by sand-blackened ice.
By the end of the day, rescuers were satisfied that a mistake had been made in record keeping and that no one else was missing.
Police said there had been “misleading information” about the number of people on the trip. Based on what initially was available, it was deemed necessary to continue the search until rescuers could be assured no one was under the ice, police said.
Ice caves are a popular destination for visitors to Iceland, with tour operators offering customers the chance to “explore the insides of glaciers” and see the blue colour and “stunning patterns” in the ice.
“This is a terrible event that you don’t want anyone to go through,″ Gardar Hrafn Sigurjonsson, the association’s vice-chairman, told local news site Visir. “We regret this terrible accident on the Breidamerkurjokull, both me personally and the association.”
Visir said the group that was at the cave during the collapse was on an organised tour accompanied by a guide. Most of the visitors were outside the cave when it came down, it reported.
Glaciers cover about 11% of the territory of Iceland, an island nation in the north Atlantic that sits on the southern edge of the Arctic Circle.
The largest is Vatnajokull, which covers 3,050 square miles (7,900 sq km).
Breidamerkurjokull is a tongue of Vatnajokull that ends at the Jokulsarlon Lagoon, where icebergs constantly break off from the glacier.
Moving rescue equipment and personnel up to the glacier is difficult due to the rugged terrain, and rescuers had to cut through the ice using chainsaws.
The glacier is about 185 miles (300km) from a volcano that erupted on the Reykjanes Peninsula in south-western Iceland on Friday.
