No warning received
In hindsight it is a blessing that things did not go even worse in Neskaupstaður, with the townspeople not getting any news of the threat of avalanches until 45 minutes before the fact. mbl.is/Eggert Jóhannesson
The Met Office merely warned of an increased avalanche risk on the U.S. social network Facebook, the night before three avalanches hit in and around the Neskaupstaður area on the morning of March 27th.
Because of the less prominent announcement, there was no coverage of the danger in the country’s news media, so residents went without a word of warning on the evening of Sunday, March 26th.
Townspeople not warned
Mayor Jón Björn Hákonarson of Fjarðabyggð says that the townspeople were not warned. The first report of flooding came in at 6 o’clock in the morning, from a man working on a snowplow.
Needed to be on the news
That warning was received about 45 minutes before another flood fell, with at least ten people injured.
About 38 thousand people follow the Met Office’s Facebook page and a small fraction of them see each entry.
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For comparison, the average number of readers of mbl.is on a daily basis is over 219 thousand people, compared to the first quarter of this year. The average number of readers of Vísir was slightly lower at the same time.
The greatest relief is that the avalanches were not worse, given the circumstances.
It is estimated that the damage due to the avalanches in Neskaupstaður is as high as 150 million ISK.
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