1 tourist dead and 1 injured after ice canyon collapses in Iceland

Rescuers in Iceland on Monday called off the search of a deadly ice canyon collapse after they determined that, contrary to initial reports, there were no other tourists trapped beneath the debris, police said.

Dozens of rescue workers and law enforcement personnel had been combing the Breidamerkurjokull glacier after part of the narrow canyon collapsed Sunday. Rescue workers had previously removed one seriously injured tourist and the body of another who was killed in the collapse.

“It has come to light that no one was hidden under the ice,” Logreglan a Sudurlandi, the local police force, said on Facebook.

One victim was pronounced dead at the scene, and another was taken by helicopter to Landspitali, the National University Hospital of Iceland, and was in stable condition, the agency said late Sunday.

The company leading the tour group had initially reported to police that there were 25 people on the trip, which included a walk through glacial caves and canyons.

After sifting through all of the collapsed ice and reviewing the company’s books, investigators determined there were only 23 people with the group, and 21 were uninjured, police said.

Scott Stevens, 49, of Austin, Texas, was exploring the glacier on a separate tour with his 10-year-old daughter right before the collapse. In the aftermath, he said, it was confusing as guides scrambled to figure out who might be missing and who was safe.

“None of us knew each other,” Stevens said. “We didn’t even speak each other’s languages.”

The tour group — which Stevens and his daughter joined in the parking lot for one of the island’s popular lagoon destinations — appeared to be a mix of people with previously booked tickets and others who had spontaneously joined from the parking lot, a dynamic that made things confusing after the collapse, Stevens said.

Because there was incomplete information, police said, their only option was to continue searching through the precarious debris field to ensure all the tourists were accounted for.

Rescue workers had been using chain saws and ice picks to chip through the ice, as the environment was too delicate to use heavy machinery.

Emergency responders received a call about 3 p.m. that a group of tourists with a tour guide were exploring ice caves and canyons on the glacier, when the side of an ice canyon gave way, Jon Thor Viglundsson, a spokesperson for ICE-SAR, a volunteer search-and-rescue association, said Sunday.

Stevens, who was out of the canyon and in an elevated position above the crevasse at the time of the collapse, said he heard a loud boom, and could see guides tending to a seriously injured tourist.

“It was very surreal,” Stevens said. Not long after, a tour guide gathered Stevens’ group together and said there had been a collapse, that people were injured and buried, and that one man was dead.

The glacier is part of Vatnajokull National Park, one of Europe’s largest, spread across nearly 5,460 square miles.

It was unclear Sunday evening what tour company organized the expedition or how many guides were on the trip.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Breidamerkurjokull is an outlet glacier that extends from Vatnajokull, Iceland’s largest glacier, into the Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon.

Breidamerkurjokull is famous for its ice caves. The best time to visit is in winter, according to Adventures.is, an Icelandic tour operator.

Visir, an Icelandic news outlet, reported that tourism companies that have signed a contract with the national park are authorized to organize ice cave trips and glacier walks year-round, and that the park “trusts companies to assess the conditions.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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