Emergency services Gerpir from Neskaupstadur and Brumrún from Eskifjördur in east Iceland were called out at 4:30 am yesterday morning to assist a woman in labor, who was stuck in a snowstorm in Oddsskard mountain pass between the two towns on her way to hospital.
About an hour later a Brumrún emergency vehicle carrying a physician arrived at the scene and proceeded to bring the woman to the hospital in Neskaupstadur, mbl.is reports.
Shortly afterwards they encountered a Gerpir emergency vehicle with another physician and a midwife onboard.
A snowplow and a snowcat led the procession to Neskaupstadur. The driving conditions were extremely poor; at one point the snowplow got stuck and the snowcat had to be used to free it. The wind reached a speed of 48 meters per second.
At 7:15 am, almost three hours after the woman had called for assistance, she arrived at the hospital in Neskaupstadur. By then the woman was almost fully dilated and only one hour later she gave birth to a baby girl.
“It was an adventure,” Ingvar Árnason, a member of Gerpir, told Fréttabladid. I bet the mother was very relieved to have made it to the hospital.”
According to Landsbjörg (ICE-SAR), the national association of emergency services, both mother and daughter are in good health.
Cold weather and snow were general in all parts of the country last weekend. Roads were impassible due to a blizzard in the West Fjords and a number of commuters required assistance from local emergency services, Fréttabladid reports.
Last night, inhabitants in the neighboring towns of Ólafsfjördur and Siglufjördur in north Iceland had to evacuate their homes due to avalanche risk. Thirty houses were evacuated in Siglufjördur and one nursing home in Ólafsfjördur.
Judging by this latest spell of bad weather, spring hasn’t quite arrived in Iceland yet. This phenomenon is known as vorhret in Icelandic.
