Almost 100 members of emergency services searched for a man in his 50s who fell into Sogid, a part of Ölfusá river in south Iceland. He was fishing with his son, who also fell into the river, but was rescued.
When Fréttabladid was sent to the printers last night, the search both in the river and from the air had been called off because of darkness, but search parties were going to walk along the river banks with search dogs until the early hours of the morning.
The father and son had waded deep into the river with their fishing rods when the son, who is in his 20s, lost his footing. When his father tried to help him, he lost his footing too and the stream caught them both.
The father’s brother, who was also fishing, waded out of the river and called for help. Fishermen on the other side of the river managed to pull the son into their boat, but they couldn’t find his father.
“He [the son] managed to stay afloat while we called a boat at nearby Bíldsfell [farm],” said one of the rescuers, Árni Thorvaldsson. “There wasn’t much time left. When we caught the boy he could hardly stand; he had been in the river for about an hour.”
The son was taken to hospital and his condition is not considered critical, though he was very cold and had swallowed some water.
Thorvaldsson said the soil in the bottom of the river is very loose where the father and son had been fishing, which is probably why they lost their footing. “The river does not have very strong currents, but where they were standing it is up to two meters deep.”
Nine emergency services participated in the search. In addition to search teams along the river banks and 12 boats, a Coast Guard helicopter was also deployed as well as divers.
