3 BRITS DIE IN BRIDGE HORROR
» Child among 28ft car plunge victims » Driver and 3 passengers fight for life
THREE Britons including a child died when their car fell 28ft off a bridge.
The driver and three other family members were last night fighting for life.
A witness in Iceland said: “It was horrible.”
A TOUR guide has told how he tried to help police save the lives of British tourists trapped in the wreckage of a car after it plunged 28ft off a bridge.
Adolf Erlingsson said they struggled to free passengers from the Toyota Land Cruiser, which was “totally destroyed” in yesterday morning’s horror crash in Iceland.
Authorities said the seven family members were two couples in their 30s – two brothers and their wives – an eightyear-old girl, a nine-year-old boy and a young child, described as an infant.
The two wives and young child were killed, while the brothers and two other youngsters were critically injured.
Mr Erlingsson, a local guide, said: “It was a horrible sight to come there and see the wreckage and people there. We struggled getting everyone out.”
It is understood the family was on a special holiday over the Christmas and New Year period. They were travelling on the national Route 1 ring road near Skeidararsandur, a vast sand plain from where glaciers can be viewed, in the south of the country.
The group’s Land Cruiser careered through a railing on the single-lane bridge over the Nupsvotn river and crashed to a bank below, at around 9.30am. Mr Erlingsson said: “Somehow, the driver must have lost control of the car and it just went through the railing and crashed down on to the bank.
“It’s kind of sandy, there’s no rivers, so it wasn’t submerged in water. It just landed there on a sandy bottom and flipped over and was totally destroyed.
“The car was totally smashed up after flying off the bridge and plunging down.”
Describing rescue efforts, he said: “When I arrived, four had been retrieved from the vehicle, one was dead and three still stuck in the car, two of them probably dead.
“It was horrible. The car seemed to have hit the ground many metres from where it stopped. Soon after I arrived we had an SUV
with a winch, we used it to lift the car up a little bit to alleviate the pressure on the driver and to try and get him out.
“The driver was alive and trapped more or less under the dashboard. I tried to talk a bit to him to calm him down.”
Mr Erlingsson said he spoke to some people who were “semi-conscious” outside the vehicle.
He added: “We were trying to get the people out of the car and helping them, it was a very difficult situation.”
Harrowing photos of the crash were posted online. One shows rescuers giving first aid to victims as they lay on the ground next to the mangled car.
Two helicopters were called to the scene from the local coastguard station, before another was scrambled from capital Reykjavik, about 250 miles away.
The four injured family members were airlifted to hospital in Reykjavik.
None of the group have been formally identified, and police are still trying to discover the cause of the accident.
Temperatures were hovering around freezing at the time of the tragedy, about an hour before sunrise.
Police do not believe ice was to blame for the crash, but said it was possible that humidity could have made the steel bridge’s surface slippery.
Officers are yet to speak to survivors about the tragedy. South Iceland Police’s Chief Supt Sveinn Kristjan Runarsson said: “We haven’t been able to talk to them about what happened.” The victims were of Asian origin and British nationals. Indian ambassador to Iceland Armstrong Changsan was called in to contact family members in India.
Mr Changsan, who visited the survivors in hospital, said: “The situation is very bad. Three people have died and one of them is an infant.
“There were seven people. Two couples in their 30s and three children. The other two children are aged eight and nine and are a girl and boy. The girl is in surgery.”
He added: “I believe the family had come to Iceland to see the glaciers. There is a popular tourist site there.”
Mr Changsan said it was too early to establish the cause of the tragedy, and that police had given him no indication of what caused the car to go off the road.
The 1,377ft bridge over the Nupsvotn was built in 1973 and is the secondlongest bridge in the country.
It is said to have been the scene of a number of accidents in recent years.
There were some reports in Iceland that it is expected to be replaced in the coming years with a shorter bridge, around a quarter of the length.
The last reported accident there was a head-on collision in July.
Yesterday’s tragedy unfolded between the town of Kirkjubaejarklaustur and Skaftafell, which is part of the Vatnajokull National Park beauty spot. The latter was nominated for inclusion in UNESCO’s World Heritage List this year.
The national park encompasses the Vatnajokull glacier, which is the largest in Europe and covers 8% of Iceland’s land mass. Skeidararsandur sits to its south.
Tourists flock to the area to enjoy hiking, camping and sightseeing flights.
Last year Iceland welcomed 2.1 million tourists, including 322,543 Britons.
Some 18 foreign visitors died on the roads in the country last year.