Tourists with small child narrowly escape drowning

Couple Einar Magnússon and Bryndis Sævarsdóttir spotted a man lying on a beach in the West Fjords yesterday with a small child on his chest. First they thought they were bathing but soon realised they had just escaped from a car that had sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

"I saw the little child lying on top of the man. I jumped out of my car and told my wife to call emergency services. I ran down to the beach, which is a very rocky one," says captain Einar Magnússon speaking to mbl.is.  The couple were able to rescue a couple at Barðaströnd beach yesterday.

The family's car had spun off the road and ended up in the sea, and several cars had already driven past the scene of the accident without noticing the man and the child lying on the beach.

When I was helping them to their feet the woman came out of the sea. Their car had completely disappeared. The woman had been able to escape," says Magnússon. He tried asking the man whether there were more passengers but he had difficulty speaking as he was suffering from exhaustion after managing to save the child and himself from the sinking vehicle.

Magnússon helped the woman onto the shore and he tells mbl.is that the couple couldn't swim.

"My wife had stopped cars and lots of people came down to help us but the phone connection is none between Patreksfjörður and Búðardalur so we couldn't call the emergency number."

After a while, a lorry drove past who had a phone which reached a connection. A doctor of foreign origin was driving past the scene of the accident and was able to attend to the family before an ambulance arrived.

"They were sitting in our car, they were freezing cold. We undressed them and put them into dry clothing and drove in the direction of the ambulance for about an hour."

The man received a slight injury to his leg but the woman and child escaped without injury. "It's incredible, that they got out of the car, because it sank immediately. The man was in complete shock. He had gotten the child out of the car and onto the beach all the time knowing that his wife was fighting for her life, in trying to get out. "

"He had seen cars driving by who hadn't noticed anything. It's actually quite incredible that I spotted them. Thank god I did, because they wouldn't have made it ashore otherwise. They were completely exhausted."

The family had arrived from the US to Iceland yesterday morning and had intended to stay in Iceland for three weeks.  Magnússon and his wife intend to visit them before they leave.