International Symposium on Mitigative Measures against Snow ...

<strong>International</strong> <strong>Symposium</strong> on Mitigative Measures against Snow Avalanches
Egilsstaðir, Iceland, March 11–14, 2008
Neskaupsstaður in 1974 were 12 died. But in the time between the response to these disasters
in 1974 and 1983, the voluntary rescue organizations in Iceland hand gone through substantial
changes. In 1983, there were three organizations of voluntary rescuers in Iceland and the
cooperation between them in Search and Rescue was on an “ad hoc” basis during operations.
The only truly joint factor was one VHF communications system they operated together.
During operations, such as when avalanches struck build up areas, the rescue teams of the
three organizations were under command and control of the local police chief, and on a
national basis the coordination was done through the National Civil Defence command center
in Reykavík. At the center, all three organizations were represented by a member of the
respective organizations as the crew of the command center during operations. In 1985, the
organizations build up in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice their own command
structure. That was done by setting up a joint National SAR Command of the rescue teams
and under that system of 18 area commands to work for the authorities responsible (Police,
aviation authorities and those responsible for Search and Rescue at sea). And in 1991, the
three organizations became two when two of them, the Association of Air-Ground Rescue
teams and the Association of scout rescue teams merged together in Landsbjörg-Association
of Icelandic Rescue teams. The other organization was the Slysavarnafélag Íslands-National
Life-saving association of Iceland-NLAI. (Today there is only one organization − ICESAR
Icelandic Association for Search and Rescue.) In 1994, National SAR Command was
representing the rescue teams in the National Civil Defence Command Center.
TRAINING IN AVALANCHE/URBAN SAR BEFORE THE DISASTERS
Training of the teams at the time came from various sources. But in 1994, Landsbjörg and
NLAI started to operate a joint Rescue school − The Icelandic Rescue School. (It was a
follow-up on the work of a school with the same name operated by Landsbjörg and its former
associations since 1977.) The school was already working on standardizing training both in
avalanche and Urban SAR at the time. But since 1989, a part of the Urban Search and Rescue
(USAR) training of the NLAI was based on experience of rescuers from the 1974 avalanches
in Neskaupsstaður. Several rescuers in the area of Súðavík and Flateyri, for example Jón
Svanberg Hjartarson, who was the incident commander in Flateyri for the first hours after the
disaster struck, has confirmed that the USAR training he attended with NLAI made it possible
for him to organise the work during the initial hours (Arnalds, 1996).
SÚÐAVÍK AVALANCHE
The first avalanche struck the town in the early hours of the morning of 16 th of January 1995.
The weather conditions were horrible and it was impossible for the rescue teams from the
nearest towns to respond to the area by road. In
the end, they had to sail by ships. So for the first
hours, the local population, including the local
rescue teams tried to do what was possible. Twenty
people were missing and the local mayor asked
all the population to go to the local freezing plant
by the sea, both to get status on who was missing
and also to start SAR work in the area. The rescue
team’s National SAR Command was not informed
of the disaster until 90 minutes after the avalanche
fell. At 09:40 the National SAR Command
102 Icelandic voluntary rescue teams in the Súðavík and Flateyri avalanches in 1995