Iceland: Police call off search after ice cave collapse kills man, say no one is missing

BERLIN – Icelandic police on Monday called off a search for people trapped in an ice cave collapse that left one person dead and one injured, saying all members of the tourist expedition had been accounted for.

Authorities had initially launched a large-scale rescue operation, with as many as 200 rescuers manually searching through the icy rubble for two people believed to be missing.

But police eventually determined that no one was missing after reviewing the tour operator's records and finding that only 23 people were on the ice cave tour, not 25 as originally thought. Despite this, rescuers continued searching until all the collapsed ice had been removed to make sure no one had been missed.

“The police officer on the scene announced that all the ice that was supposed to have fallen on the people had been removed,” police said. “It turned out that no one was hiding under the ice.”

The rescue operation began around 3 p.m. local time on Sunday when authorities received reports that an ice cave had collapsed on the Breidamerkurjokull glacier in southeastern Iceland. One man died at the scene and a woman was airlifted to a hospital in the capital Reykjavik. Both victims are U.S. citizens, police said.

The search, which had been suspended overnight due to dangerous weather conditions, resumed around 7 a.m., Icelandic broadcaster RUV reported. Videos showed rescuers working inside two large craters surrounded by ice blackened by sand from the Breidamerkurjokull glacier.

But by the end of the day, they were convinced that no one else was missing. Police said there had been “misleading information” about the number of people on board.

The Icelandic Mountain Guides Association has called for a thorough investigation and stricter regulation of ice cave tours. Glacier tours during the hottest summer months can be very dangerous, the association said.

The tourism agency is preparing a report for the government to discuss the regulation of glacier tours, including visits to ice caves. Tourism Minister Lilja Alfredsdóttir said the issue would be debated in parliament.

Ice caves are a popular destination for visitors to Iceland, with tour operators offering guests the chance to “explore the inside of the glaciers” and see the blue colour and “breathtaking patterns” of the ice.

Glaciers cover about 11% of the territory of Iceland, an island in the North Atlantic at the southern end of the Arctic Circle. The largest is Vatnajokull, which covers 7,900 square kilometers. Breidamerkurjokull is a tongue of Vatnajokull that ends in the Jokulsarlon lagoon, where icebergs constantly break off the glacier.

Moving rescue equipment and personnel to the glacier was difficult due to the rough terrain, and rescuers had to cut through the ice using chainsaws.

The glacier is about 300 kilometers (185 miles) from a volcano that erupted Friday on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland.

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Associated Press reporter Marco Di Marco contributed to this report.

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Keyton reported from Berlin.