Storm Troopers
With its ethereal yet inhospitable landscapes and brutally unpredictable weather, Iceland is a country that can threaten even the boldest outdoorsmen. Men’s Health bedded in with Ice-sar – the volunteer rescue force whose members risk their lives to save those in peril
In Iceland, as the locals are quick to inform you, it’s not the cold or the rain that will get you – it’s the wind. In October 2017, a pair of hunters were enjoying a day outdoors in the east of the country. The weather at that time of year, while not exactly what you’d call warm, can still be clement, and the terrain has an almost extraterrestrial feel, with hot springs, volcanic rock and rough edges that spread out into the north Atlantic like a drop of ink.
Having shot 16 birds and buoyed by their haul, the hunters – a pair of well-equipped, highly experienced men – decided to press on a little further. Then the sky darkened. The weather is known to change both quickly and often. Suddenly, the two men were being battered by rain and winds that whipped their skin at a speed of 40m per second. They tried to call for help but their mobile phone signal failed, and even if they had been successful in their attempts to raise the alarm, they couldn’t have given an accurate location. These two men, who had done everything right, now found themselves fearing for their lives, disoriented and exposed, and at the mercy of an Icelandic storm.
“The terrain here is not necessarily the hardest in the world,” says Örn Smárason, a project manager for Iceland’s sprawling network of search and rescue teams known as Slysavarnarfélagið Landsbjörg, or the Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue (Ice-sar) in English. “It’s the wind that really causes problems.”
When it comes, it’s no laughing matter. An Icelandic gale will rip tents in half and snap poles, strip roofs and knock people off their feet. In this case, it pinned the hunters to the side of a mountain, preventing them from seeking shelter or escaping. Trickling streams became raging, impassable torrents and the pair quickly lost their bearings. But minutes after they were reported missing, the alarm was raised with Ice-sar, and its network of volunteers began mobilising to rescue the two hunters.
LOOKING FOR TROUBLE
Membership of the 4,000-strong IceSar network demands more than just a happy-to-help attitude. To negotiate the inaccessibility of much of Iceland’s landscape, members must be proficient navigators, mountaineers, divers, sailors and even parachutists. After completing 18 months of basic training, volunteers can then undergo specialist programmes in their chosen discipline, from avalanche search missions to white-water rescue.
Ice-sar members are permanently on call and can be drafted at any time of the day or night. (Smárason once abandoned his Christmas lunch on receiving an urgent rescue call.) Often, they must head out in conditions that are not merely unpleasant but dangerous.
Ice-sar organises rescue teams with the requisite skills for any given mission using a live database of respondents. In the case of the lost hunters, information had to be gathered quickly. Where were they headed? Where were they last known to have been? Their level of experience was also taken into account. Practised hunters will react very differently when lost to, say, a group of tourists.
“These things start small and get bigger,” says Smárason. “If you get lost, first, the local teams will look for you. If there’s no sign of you after nine hours of
“An Icelandic gale will rip tents, snap poles and knock people off their feet”
searching, we’ll call on [more members], and so on, until we find you. It can end up with 400 volunteers searching for you.”
The local teams searched for the hunters all night without success. “At 9am [the following day], there was a status meeting. They hadn’t found anything, any tracks, anything at all,” says Smárason. “It was raining like hell and everyone was now 10 hours into the search. Then they mobilised all of the available volunteers in the area – over 70 rescuers. Even more were on their way when the hunters were found.”
It turned out that, in an effort to protect themselves, the hunters had dug a hole under a rock, climbed inside and covered themselves with a plastic sheet. They spent 16 hours huddled in their improvised shelter before finally being rescued. By that point, they were unable to stand from exhaustion, but otherwise safe.
“When you find the person, it fills you with a sense of power,” says Smárason. “It’s like completing a piece of Ikea furniture. You need so many pieces to make a whole. You’re solving this puzzle together. You might be working with someone you don’t know from the other side of the country, but because you’ve had the same training, there’s a sense of community.”
SAVING STRANGERS
From a young age, many volunteers have felt a strong sense of duty to protect their fellow citizens. Smárason’s parents and grandparents were members of IceSar, and he began his training in one of the youth units, which could be described as a slightly more advanced version of the Scouts. There, he learned to read maps and administer first aid, as well as receiving a schooling in the principles of mountain safety. This training had a dual purpose: to help him stay safe outdoors, but also to equip him with the knowledge to help others in peril.
A number of disasters are said to have galvanised the Icelandic people into developing Ice-sar. Smárason tells me the story of the Doon, a British fishing trawler that sailed from Hull in the 1940s. Trawlers would head up towards the Arctic Circle in search of deep-sea fish, and accidents were not uncommon.
After running aground against Iceland’s north-western coast during a raging storm, the Doon was wrecked at the bottom of an 18m cliff. With no way off the ship, the 13 crew members were trapped on board as the vessel rapidly began to disintegrate into the freezing water.
At that time, there was no official rescue team, no organisation responsible for helping them. So, a group of local farmers stepped in. These men were adept at scaling the cliffs, often doing so in search of bird eggs in the spring. A team of 20 set
off on a six-hour hike to reach the wreck, where they lowered themselves down onto a ledge at the foot of the cliff. The makeshift rescue squad worked through the night, pulling the sailors off the boat and up the sheer rock to safety. Why did they risk their lives to save strangers? “Because they knew what to do,” Smárason puts it, simply. “These farmers had a great deal of knowledge about the local surroundings. They thought, ‘Nobody else has this knowledge, and nobody else has this equipment. If we don’t help them, these people are not going to be here to talk about it tomorrow.’”
In the intervening years, a large accident prevention programme has been implemented, spearheaded by Iceland’s women who were sick of losing their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers to the sea. It has made fishing and, indeed, most other activities that take place on the island, much safer. From changes as rudimentary as proper fire drills to investment in rescue suits that enable wearers to float in the ocean for hours, reforms carried out by Ice-sar (along with changes in Icelandic maritime law) have led to a significant reduction in the number of fatalities at sea. Indeed, as recently as 2017, there were no deaths recorded that year. Compare that with one particularly disastrous three-week period in January 1968, when 58 people lost their lives on British fishing boats alone, and it’s clear how far the country has come.
PREPARE FOR ACTION
Ice-sar also works closely with the Icelandic coastguard, for whom Guðmundur Ragnar Magnúss works as a helicopter winchman. Like many people accustomed to operating in highly pressurised situations, Magnúss has a calm, understated manner. (Icelandic people are not exactly known for their hyperbole.) Mostly, he explains, his job involves ensuring that the coastguard is informed about all maritime traffic in and out of Iceland. There was one incident, however, in which he was winched onto a burning ship in the middle of a “slapper” – a particularly violent storm. The height of the waves was so great that every time the ship rose and fell, it would crash down with such force that it sent shock waves rippling through the steel hull.
“We rescued a crew from a cargo ship carrying fishmeal that was burning south of the island, maybe 20 nautical miles offshore. There were 13 people on board and the whole ship – the bridge, everything – was on fire,” he recalls. “Of course, I’m not used to being lowered onto a burning ship. But it’s just procedure. Maybe the conditions were a little bit
worse than those we usually train in, but it was still basic stuff for me.”
Missions such as this might not fit most people’s definition of “basic”, but emergency protocols are drilled and drilled again until they become second nature. In the heat of the moment, there’s little time to strategise.
“Once I was lowered onto the ship, we sent people up to the helicopter on a rescue strap, two at a time. It took 10 minutes to get everyone off. It was quick, but we practise a lot.” This is a sentiment echoed by all members of Ice-sar: what saves lives isn’t brute strength, or daring. It’s knowledge. There are no minimum physical fitness requirements, though many rescue missions are very physically challenging and the organisation is careful about who it sends out. What it does ask is that members rehearse.
Iceland has no standing army and its police force is spread thin, which makes the service of volunteers not just useful but invaluable. Ice-sar receives no government funding; ironically, for a safety-minded organisation, it raises most of its funds through the sale of fireworks, ahead of the country’s extensive New Year’s Eve celebrations. (It also sells Christmas trees and receives donations.) In 2018, it partnered with the watch brand Luminox, which donates part of the proceeds of its Ice-sar Arctic 1000 Series to the organisation.
Icelandic citizens are only too happy to support their civilian saviours. Years of hard-earned experience have instilled in them a deep respect for the environment they live in and its dangers. But should you ever find yourself in peril, don’t be surprised if the members of Ice-sar who come to your rescue appear totally unfazed. After all, they’ve been preparing for this their whole lives.
With thanks to Luminox, official partner of Ice-sar. Visit: luminox.com
“What saves lives isn’t brute strength or daring. It is knowledge”