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
difficult job because a lot of debris was mixed with the snow. It is estimated that snow had to
be removed from an area of around 3000 square meters. As in Súðavík, avalanche rescuers
from all over Iceland took turns in helping with debris removal and collecting belongings of
the people living in the avalanche area. Some anger was from the teams because Firefighters
from Reykjavík were put in charge of the removal groups of the teams but not those in charge
of the teams (Tómasson, 1999).
WHAT DID THE RESCUE TEAMS LEARN?
A lot of experience came from these two difficult missions. In addition to these two disasters,
a local farmer in the area of Reykhólar in western Iceland was killed on 18 th January when
avalanche hit some farmhouses. His son was rescued after 12 hours, alive. The experience of
the rescue teams can be classified into five categories:
Command and control
The changes in organisation of the rescue associations in the Icelandic Civil Defence Command
center made the organization of the work easier under the civil defence command. The
rescue teams area commands in the area of the accident and in other areas provided function
in the command centers both on a local and national basis. The experience from Súðavík and
Flateyri was also important in the development of single Joint Rescue Coordination Center (J-
RCC) which has taken over function of the Civil Defence Command center. In the J-RCC, all
national command and coordination is now done; on land, sea and in the air.
Training
Training of rescuers in the field of avalanche rescue was adapted to the experience from the
disasters. As before, training in Urban SAR continued to focus on avalanches as a main
reason for response in that field, as well as earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Equipment
Lack of avalanche beacons in the early hours of the response was quickly repaired. In the next
two years, rescue teams all over Iceland bought 400 avalanche beacons. Also since 1995,
some rescue teams have in their equipment caches electronic USAR search equipment such as
cameras and listening devices as well as rescue equipment for Medium USAR work.
Dogs
The number of SAR dogs available for avalanche work was increased following the disasters.
The experience of dog handlers that took part in the missions was put into the training of the
dogs. For example, covering the dog’s feet because injuries to their feet because of broken
glass was common in the search.
Other
A conference was held by the National SAR Command and the local area commands in
November 1995 in order to relay lessons learnt in Súðavík and Flateyri to rescuers at the
conference, lessons from the command side of things were looked into. There was a
presentation from the incident commander on both missions. Also there was an independent
report that National SAR Command made about the Súðavík response. Slide presentation
with pictures from the scene´s were shown to rescue teams all over Iceland (Magnusson,
2008). No special analysis was done by the associations on how the work in the. In NLAI
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