Three tourists killed in 4x4 Iceland glacier trip smash
THREE British tourists, including an infant, were killed yesterday when their car plunged 25ft off a bridge in Iceland.
Four others, including a girl and boy aged eight and nine, were critically injured in the crash, which happened before sunrise.
The Toyota Land Cruiser carrying all seven to visit a glacier smashed through railings on a bridge, landing on its roof on a rocky river bed below. It is unclear how the driver lost control of the 4x4.
Horrific pictures of the aftermath show emergency services trying to free those trapped in the wreckage with bodies strewn around.
Those involved are understood to be two brothers and their wives, all in their 30s, and the couples’ children.
Both wives are believed to have died.
The accident happened at around 9.30am, almost two hours before sunrise at this time of year.
The temperature was around freezing. Police said the road was not believed to be icy, but humidity could have made the bridge’s steel surface slippery.
Rescue workers had to cut open the vehicle to free the driver. The injured were taken by helicopter to hospital in the capital, Reykjavik, some 240km away.
Tour guide Adolf Erlingsson, who was among the first on the scene of the crash, said conditions had been good for driving. ‘It was a horrible sight,’ he said. ‘The car was a wreck after flying off the bridge.
‘When I arrived at the scene below the bridge, four of the people were lying outside the car, one of them was dead... three injured. Three were stuck in the car. Two of them were dead.
‘I can’t imagine what happened which led to a car going through the barricade on the middle of the bridge. I didn’t feel that there was any ice on the bridge.’
He was driving a minibus carrying 19 tourists when he came across the crash. ‘Outside of the car there was one adult and two children, semiconscious,’ he said. ‘I talked a little bit to them. I tried to talk to the driver to calm him down. Soon after I arrived we had an SUV with a winch and we used it to lift the car up a little to try to get him out.’
It is the second fatal crash in
Smashed through the railings
18 years on the bridge, which spans the river Nupsvotn and at 1,000ft long is the country’s second longest. Built in 1973, it has had more accidents than any other in Iceland, with 14 since 2000.
The family were travelling on Iceland’s national ring road, Route 1. They were in Skeidararsandur, an area known as the ‘black desert’ as it is a vast black sand plain.
The area is popular with tourists and is close to the Vatnajokull glacier, Europe’s largest ice cap.
It is also close to the Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon, used as a location in James Bond films Die Another Day and A View To A Kill.
Indian ambassador Armstrong Changsan said: ‘The situation is very bad. Three people have died and one of them is an infant. A girl is in surgery.’
The accident is thought to be the worst in Iceland since 2009, when three people died in a collision between an SUV and a taxi between Reykjavík and the town of Hafnarfjordur.