Four tourists were rescued from a piece of floating ice in Fjallsárlón glacial lagoon, East Iceland, yesterday afternoon. Fjallsárlón is just west of the popular Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon.
Dining out in Iceland can be dangerous. Photo courtesy of ICE-SAR.
According to Páll Sigurður Vignisson, member of the Hornafjörður rescue team and employee at Jökulsárlón, the tourists, who were from the United States, had set up a table and chairs on an ice floe with the plan of eating dinner when a gust of wind suddenly pushed the ice away from land, leaving them stranded about 10 meters from the shore.
One of the tourists managed to jump to shore before the ice drifted too far and called 112 for help. “When we arrived it was quite comical to see them sitting on chairs and with a table on an iceberg … Yes the dinner was over,” Páll told Iceland Review, adding that he had not noticed what they had been eating as he was too busy getting life vests to them.
The situation could have been more serious, though, as Páll told RÚV. “They could have been in danger. We never know how ice will behave, if it rolls over and when—we just don’t know.”
ZR/PS
