Search for Teenager Continues
Rescue workers by Núpá river, last night.
The search for a teenage boy, who fell into Núpá river in Eyjafjörður, North Iceland, Wednesday night, will continue this morning, mbl.is reports. Rescue workers monitored the river overnight and kept searching around it. It is very cold in this part of the country, and temperatures are expected to drop even more today, although it won’t be as windy as yesterday.
Conditions for searching have been difficult from the start. The search area is expected to be expanded today. Yesterday afternoon, close to 200 people had participated in the search effort—between 50 and 60 at a time, Morgunblaðið reports .
The boy was working by a local generator on assisting a farmer in restoring power to the farm, following a violent storm, when the accident occurred. They were by a dam in the river when ice, carried by the river, swept the boy into the stream. The accident was reported shortly before 10 pm Wednesday night.
The Norwegian news website tv2.no reports that the missing teenager is of Norwegian descent, residing in Iceland. The report states that this has been confirmed by a spokesperson of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.
“Conditions at the site are very demanding, and at times, there is limited visibility,” Chief Inspector Sigurður Sigurðsson tells mbl.is . “Part of the river has to be monitored, because ice accumulates in it and breaks loose rather suddenly, increasing the current in the part of the river where search is underway. That’s what happened once, just before 6 pm [last night], creating a certain degree of danger, but a quick response and warnings succeeded in preventing an accident from happening.”
From the transport aircraft of the Royal Danish Airforce.
The Royal Danish Air Force assisted in the search effort by using its C-130 Hercules transport aircraft for transporting divers, rescue workers, equipment for the search effort, and a specialized vehicle to Akureyri Airport, located north of the accident site.
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The story has been updated.
