tourist trophy casualties

The New York Times

Sports | take a lap in the world’s most dangerous race, take a lap in the world’s most dangerous race.

By ANDREW KEH JUNE 7, 2017

DOUGLAS, Isle of Man

D avey Lambert, a 48-year-old man from Gateshead, England, died this week after crashing at the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, an annual motorcycle event here that claimed two more lives on Wednesday. Four competitors died in the races last year, and another was killed the year before that. Those fatalities brought the death toll at the event, known as the TT, to 146 since it was first run in 1907. If one includes fatal accidents occurring during the Manx Grand Prix, the amateur races held later in the summer on the same Snaefell Mountain Course, the figure rises above 250.

For this reason, and others, the TT has few parallels within global sports. The concept of mortality underpins everything here. It gives the race its prestige, opens it to criticism, makes it exhilarating, makes it terrifying. It puts the island on the map.

It is also why, for two weeks each year, this sleepy rock in the middle of the Irish Sea (population 88,000) becomes something like a rollicking festival ground. Organizers convert 37.73 miles of undulating public roads into an enormous, claw-shaped racetrack, and roughly 40,000 visitors, many of them bringing their own motorcycles, join local fans for a week of practices and a week of competition. It all culminates with the Senior TT, which takes place this Friday, a public holiday on the Isle of Man. (Schools are closed for the entire race week.)

Speeds over the four race days routinely exceed 200 miles per hour. Every year, there are crashes. Almost every year, there are deaths.

Deaths by year

For riders, the TT — arguably the world’s most dangerous race — represents a supreme challenge. Yet many of the world’s best professionals have never put tire to pavement on the course. They know that the consequences of even a minor mistake can be fatal.

“If Roger Federer misses a shot, he loses a point,” said Richard Quayle, a former TT winner. “If I miss an apex, I lose my life.”

From grandstand to finish line, here’s a tour of the deadly corners, colorful characters and rich history along one lap of the Isle of Man TT course:

GINGER HALL TO RAMSEY

This area is one of the riders’ least favorite portions because of the bumpiness of the road and the curves.

RAMSEY HAIRPIN

The hairpin, a walking-speed turn heading up to the mountain.

Joey’s

Glentramman

SULBY STRAIGHT

In 2015, James Hillier hit 206 miles per hour along this stretch.

Mountain Mile

Ballacrye Jump

Mountain box

Conor Cummins lost control here in 2010; video of the spectacular crash has been viewed millions of times online.

BALLAUGH BRIDGE

In 2014, a rider named Bob Price died after he lost control going over the humpback Ballaugh Bridge and careened directly into the side of the Raven Pub.

riders, spectators

and officials

Mile marker

The Bungalow

Windy Corner

KEPPEL GATE

Years ago, there was an actual sheep gate here. The first man through on a race day had to open the gate, and the last man had to shut it again.

Barregarrow

Creg-Ny-Baa

Cronk-y-Voddy Straight

The big grandstand and the gigantic hand-operated scoreboard across the street are permanent year-round fixtures on the course.

Glen Hellen

From Laurel Bank to Glen Hellen, sunlight through the overhanging branches has a strobe effect on the road, making it difficult to see and perceive the course.

Laurel Bank

Union Mills

Port Soderick

ISLE OF MAN

Course elevation

Cronk-y-Voddy

Sulby Bridge

The big grandstand and the gigantic, hand-operated scoreboard across the street are permanent, year-round fixtures on the course.

Grandstand: Where Skill and Danger Draw a Crowd

The grandstand area represents the TT’s main hive, brimming with energy and anticipation. The race days begin here, swelling with human drama and competitive intrigue and the thrill of possibility.

This was not always the case. In 1976, after a string of high-profile deaths and ensuing criticism, the TT lost its world championship status. For the next 30 years, the event grew stagnant and stumbled along, until many came to believe that the centenary races, in 2007, would be the final ones.

But the TT survived, and for that many thank Paul Phillips, 38, whom many simply know as “the boss of the TT.” In 2006, Phillips left a job in finance, taking a significant pay cut, to accept a government position as the Motorsport Development Manager for the Isle of Man and the difficult task of resuscitating the island’s beloved races.

“I felt, then, and I still feel now, that it’s a public service, really,” he said of his job.

Phillips and his colleagues recruited better riders, negotiated new media contracts and refocused on the safety standards that some felt had become an afterthought. At the same time, they marketed risk alongside skill.

“Before my tenure here, there was an underlying there’s-nothing-to-see-here kind of mentality, and to the wider world, to me, it felt like we came across as a group as kind of bloodthirsty and ignorant,” Phillips said. “Now, all of our marketing is about: ‘This is the most dangerous race in the world. These guys are the gladiators.’ ”

And the crowds, the excitement, and the money have returned.

Ballagarey: More Like “Balla-Scary”

The Mountain Course features several hundred distinct turns, but according to Quayle, Ballagarey Corner — or as he calls it, “Balla-scary” — is its most crucial.

The turn appears early in a rider’s lap, so neither they nor their bikes are properly warmed up. Riders arrive at high speed and exit onto a mouthwatering two-mile straight, meaning precious seconds are at stake. And it is a blind corner, which activates defensive reflexes in even the most seasoned riders.

“Your brain has a natural instinct to be careful, to protect you, to preserve you,” said Quayle, who coaches newcomers every year as a rider liaison. “When you’re rushing into a corner, your brain goes, Slow down, you idiot. Put the brake on. Turn the throttle off.”

Motorcycles enter the corner at close to 180 miles per hour, and things do not always go well. In 2010, Guy Martin, a popular English rider, rammed his Honda CBR1000RR into the stone wall there, creating a terrifyingly cinematic explosion.

Quayle, a bespectacled, eminently excitable 44-year-old Manxman nicknamed Milky, knows every bump and divot on the road. In 2002, he became one of only three people from the island to win a TT. But he stopped racing a year later after a horrific crash of his own.

Video: Meet Milky Quayle

He still marvels at the absurdity of the course — the roads lined with stone walls, mailboxes, telephone poles and storefronts, the way claustrophobic forest roads swiftly transition into wide-open mountain passages — and it is clear he misses it.

It’s like sex, Quayle said. “We all love it. But the best bit’s the orgasm, isn’t it? And you can’t have that all the time, can you? But here, when you’re riding around here, you’re getting that orgasm all the time.”

Black Dub: Riding Together, Crashing Together

Even within the motorsports community, sidecar racers are considered a peculiar breed. It takes a special sort of madness, competitors say, to put your life so fully in the guardianship of another racer.

Growing up in England, Ben Birchall always dreamed of being a solo racer, but when he turned 18, he found he had neither the money nor the connections to make it happen. Becoming a sidecar passenger, though, was another story — an easier, if crazier, way to get into the game.

“Drivers always need passengers,” Birchall, 40, said with a chuckle. “You just need some leathers and some will and probably not much brain power and certainly a lot of nerves.”

Sidecar passengers sit crouched on a platform with nothing to secure them except two handgrips. They serve as ballast for their motorcycles, sliding one way, arching their bodies another way, depending on feel and intuition and memory to move their weight around to aid their drivers.

Birchall spent 10 years as a passenger before earning the money to become a driver. When he did, his brother Tom, 10 years his junior, became his first passenger. The two have since become one of the world’s top teams, winning the sidecar world championship in 2009 and notching five TT wins. Their latest came Monday, when they set a new TT sidecar lap record, averaging 117.119 miles an hour.

“It’s a bit like a drug,” Tom Birchall said about riding in a sidecar. “You just keep chasing it. It’s a cliché, isn’t it? But it’s the closest thing I could imagine it to.”

The Birchalls’ motorsport addiction began when they were kids. Their parents, who honeymooned at the TT in 1969, brought their children to the Isle of Man each year. They said it was easy not to let brotherly love get in the way of aggressive racing, but when they crashed at Black Dub three years ago, their fraternal instincts emerged again, each one thinking first about the safety of the other.

“He was shouting for me, and I was shouting for him, as we were both spread across the road,” Tom Birchall said, laughing.

Ballaugh Bridge: Prepare for Takeoff

Gene McDonnell died near Ballaugh Bridge in 1986 in what even the competition’s official website calls “the most horrific accident ever witnessed at the TT.” It began when a helicopter dispatched to rescue a fallen rider spooked a horse, which bounded over several fences and dashed onto the racecourse — directly into the path of McDonnell, who barreled into the animal at full speed. Both McDonnell and the horse died, and McDonnell’s bike exploded into a ball of flames after crashing into a row of parked cars.

As you see in the pictures above, it's near impossible to clear the bridge without catching some air. But soar too high or too far, and the landing can be deadly.

In 2014, a rider named Bob Price died after he lost control going over the humpback bridge and careened directly into the side of the Raven Pub, a popular establishment just beyond it. Today, there is a wooden plaque, only a few inches long, on the brick wall of the pub. On it are the words, “Rest in Peace Bob.”

Hilary Musson: Never Far From the Roar

Hilary Musson remembers getting dressed and riding her motorcycle up the mountain to the 26th milestone, where she was posted as a race marshal one day a decade ago. The next thing she remembers is waking up in a hospital bed. She remembers feeling bewildered when her husband, John, informed her that six weeks had passed since she had opened her eyes. She remembers looking down at her left leg and she remembers it not being there.

“There are a lot of accidents during the races, but not a lot involving spectators, marshals, members of the public,” said Musson, now 70, taking a deep breath as she sat in her dining room. “But it had to be me.”

Musson knew the risks. In 1978, after years of competing in local races, Musson became the second woman to compete in the TT, ending a de facto 16-year ban on female participants. Musson finished 15th, one place behind her husband.

“It was just a huge sense of achievement when I finished it, because people didn’t think I would,” Musson said.

In decades of races, she had only two accidents, and her most serious injury from the two of them had been a bruised wrist. She and her husband moved to the Isle of Man in 2006, only a year before the accident. She never thought she would be hurt years after she stopped competing.

On the day of the crash — June 7, 2007 — a rider charging along the mountain course clipped a pole at high speed and was killed instantly. His motorcycle, now a rogue 400-pound missile, zigzagged back across the pavement and hurtled into a crowd of onlookers. Two spectators were killed, and two marshals, including Musson, were badly injured. When Musson awoke later that summer, she was told she had sustained fractures to her ribs, vertebrae and legs, a burst spleen and a severed femoral artery. Her left leg was amputated above the knee.

The vest she was wearing that morning, which she has kept to this day, has a tire print across the back.

“I still find it difficult to accept it, even now, because it wasn’t my fault,” said Musson, who still volunteers at the races. “I still feel it was a bit cruel, I’d say.”

From her living room, she can hear the motorcycles roaring down the Sulby Straight, one of the fastest stretches of the course. Just inside her front door sits a motorcycle, a glistening Aprilia RS250. She bought it more than 20 years ago.

“John keeps trying to get me to sell it, but I just like to see it there,” she said. “I’ve always said I’d get on a bike again, but longer I leave it, the more difficult it’s getting.”

Joey’s: Honoring the TT’s Greatest

The king of the race remains Joey Dunlop, who won a record 26 events at the TT. His sublime skills are revered today, nearly two decades after his death in a race in Estonia, even though many fans have only ever seen him compete in video clips.

“At certain corners coming through here, if you’re one foot to one side of where you should be, the bike is practically uncontrollable,” said Roy Moore, a longtime radio commentator for the TT. “Joey Dunlop, they reckon if you put a sixpence on the bloody road on a corner he would ride over it every time, because of his memory and because his ability to be in exactly the right gear, pointing in the right direction, was the same every lap he went on.”

Verandah: YouTube’s Favorite Crash

It took Conor Cummins a few months to watch the video, and as far as he is concerned, he never needs to see it again.

Filmed from above, he appears surging through Verandah, a wavy, four-turn passage on the mountain, at 150 miles an hour. As he leans into a rightward curve, he loses control and his motorcycle slides out from under him, leaving him skimming on his back, as if the pavement were a sheet of ice. With nothing to stop his momentum, he clips the edge of the road and spills off the course, tumbling violently down a steep hillside. His body bounces off the ground, twirls in the air like a can tossed from a speeding car and crash-lands, finally, amid a hail of splintered motorcycle parts hundreds of feet from the spot where he lost control.

Sickening as it is, video of the crash, from 2010, has been viewed millions of times online. The most horrific moment of Cummins’s life endures as a viral video.

“If I had a pound for every time that was watched, I think I’d be a wealthy person,” said Cummins, 30, an Isle of Man native with four podium finishes at the TT. “Is sadistic the word? But something like that is drama, isn’t it? And there’s a percentage of people who like that drama. And yeah, it was a spectacular crash. I can’t lie about that.”

Cummins spent two months in the hospital. Rods, plates and screws were inserted up and down his body to stabilize all the fractures he sustained. The incident left thick scars snarled around his skin and a traumatic memory etched into his mind.

And still, the very next year he was back at the TT, perched on his bike, zooming through Verandah.

Creg-Ny-Baa: Take in the View With a Pint

“Little businesses here rely on the TT, and for some, without a doubt, the race alone is what keeps them going all year,” said Steve Christie, 46, who helps run the Creg-Ny-Baa, a famous pub along the course.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, tourists packed the Isle of Man’s hotels and restaurants and shops, and for a few weeks each year, the island feels like its old self. Last fall, the government reported that more than 42,000 people, from more than 40 countries, visited the island during the 2016 TT. They spent an estimated 31.3 million pounds, about $40 million.

Christie said that the Creg does about a third of its yearly business during the annual race weeks. In addition to a lively party, the pub offers a stirring view. Riders descend the mountain from Kate’s Cottage, near the 34th milepost, at 150 miles an hour, pull their motorcycles into right turn at around 80 m.p.h. and then rush into a straight that some riders consider the fastest on the course.

The Finish Line: Two Racers Stand Apart

The TT field has grown ever more competitive over the last decade, but at the moment two riders stand apart from the rest: Ian Hutchinson, who won three races last year, and Michael Dunlop, who captured two. That the two men finished last year’s competition engaged in a war of words had only heightened the anticipation for their showdown this year.

“I’m sure they have mutual respect, but they don’t particularly like each other,” said John Watterson, the sports editor for Isle of Man Newspapers. “They will push it. I hope they don’t hurt themselves doing it.”

Hutchinson, 37, of West Yorkshire, England, won the Superbike race on Sunday, improving his TT win total to 15.

Dunlop, 28, from Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, has won 13 races at the TT. He descends from a racing family with a history at once proud and tragic: He is the son of Robert Dunlop (five TT wins) and the nephew of Joey (the most decorated TT racer, with 26 wins), both of whom were killed in racing crashes. Michael Dunlop famously competed in a race only two days after his father’s death in 2008 — and won.

“He’s a maverick,” said Moore, the radio commentator. “He just rides the thing like a lunatic — in control, but sometimes not where he should be. But he’s a hell of a rider.”

Last year, Dunlop set a single lap record, at 16 minutes 53.929 seconds, averaging a blistering 133.962 miles an hour. “You think you know everything, but you can always ride harder and harder and get faster and faster,” Dunlop said.

The Crematorium: The TT’s Eerie Neighbor

The ashes of Christine Cowley’s brother Paul were heavier than she expected — more like coarse sand than, say, the ash from a burning cigarette. He had told family members where he wanted his ashes spread if he were to die racing. They never thought they would have to do it.

After the funeral at Douglas Borough Crematorium — located, rather ominously, a few hundred feet from the finish line — Christine Cowley walked out to Quarterbridge Road, the spot where she and Paul had used to watch the races with their father. She and her mother awkwardly scooped his ashes with the cap of a medicine bottle. They kept losing their footing on the soft ground, and soon bits of ash were getting under their fingernails. They began to laugh, which felt strange. But it also felt good.

Paul Cowley was a sidecar passenger, like his dad. He died in 2004, after losing his grip on a practice lap near the ninth milepost. He was 22 years old and engaged to be married. His baby girl, Shauna, was born four months after his funeral.

For two years after his death, Christine Cowley left the island during the races, trying to shelter herself from the memories. Each time, though, she found herself following the results and gossip online. The third year, she stayed, and though it was tough, she enjoyed it, too. The race, she realized, was part of her DNA.

“I still love the TT,” Cowley said. “I love everything it represents.”

Meet the Coach Who Devotes His Life to a Deadly Motor Race

Rivals Chase the ‘Buzz You Can’t Get Anywhere Else’

Advertisement

The Deadliest Race On The Planet

The TT’s deadliest year was in 1970 when six racers were killed, including three during practice. 2005 saw three TT fatalities and six Manx Grand Prix deaths in the same summer season. For several decades until 1976, the Isle of Man event was part of the Motorcycle Grand Prix world competitions (now MotoGP), but in 1972 Italian champion Giacomo Agostini came out with a protest against the extreme dangers of the course. The ten-time TT winner was followed by other riders who boycotted the island's race, eventually taking it off the Grand Prix schedule. Despite some calls over the years to discontinue the TT racing festival, fiercely loyal followings and economic benefits to the Isle of Man have kept the notorious event going for over a century.

If tradition ever comes with a deadly sacrifice, then the TT is certainly a winner. IF YOU ENJOY OUR CONTENT, PLEASE CONSIDER A VOLUNTARY DONATION TO SUPPORT OUR WRITING & JOURNALISTIC EFFORTS.

SPORTS HISTORY MAGAZINE in DIGITAL

Winter 2020

Spring 2020

Spring 2021

Winter 2021

Shop For Our Books & DVD's

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy: Dangerous Motorcycle Mayhem

T he Isle of Man Tourist Trophy is among the most dangerous races on Earth, with 242 deaths in 107 years of existence.

The TT, as it is commonly known, is the oldest race in motorcycle history, uniting high-octane adrenaline junkies with fun-loving bikers.

For more, see our feature video story on Conor Cummins, a racer who crashed in the TT and survived: The Isle of Men – The World’s Deadliest Race

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
• How Nayib Bukele’s ‘Iron Fist’ Has Transformed El Salvador
• What if Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?
• How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
• Long COVID Looks Different in Kids
• How Project 2025 Would Jeopardize Americans’ Health
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• The 32 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2024

Contact us at [email protected]

Isle of Man TT: Raul Torras Martinez dies after crash in first Supertwin Race of the year

The 46-year-old had competed in 21 TT races and earned 18 trophies during his racing career.

Wednesday 7 June 2023 00:42, UK

A man has died competing in the Isle of Man TT Races, organisers have confirmed.

Raul Torras Martinez, 46, was killed in a crash during the first Supertwin Race of the year.

The accident occurred at Alpine, between the 16th and 17th mile markers on the final of the three-lap race.

A statement from the organisers said: "Raul was an experienced TT competitor who made his debut in 2017, with a best result of 15th in last year's Supertwin Race.

"He recorded his fastest ever lap of the TT Mountain Course earlier today in the Superstock Race, with a lap at an average speed of 125.470mph whilst securing a 20th-place finish.

"Raul was the fastest Spaniard ever to have lapped the TT course."

Read more: 'Riders know the risks', says Isle of Man TT boss

Mr Martinez competed in 21 TT races and earned a total of 18 Bronze Replica trophies.

Passing on their "deepest sympathy" to Mr Martinez's family, friends and loved ones, the organisers described him as an "incredibly popular member of the paddock family" with an infectious smile.

Last year, a father and son were killed during the competition.

Driver Roger Stockton, 56, and 21-year-old passenger Bradley, from Crewe, died following an incident at Ago's Leap on the final lap of the second sidecar race.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Last month, Gary Thompson, boss of the TT told Sky News that riders have to accept risks, while insisting the event is doing more than ever to improve safety.

"We try to manage risk much better than was done in the past," he said.

"The riders sign on, they know that risk. And, almost for them, that's the challenge. For us, we manage that risk without taking away that challenge."

The TT takes place over a two-week period and brings together motorcycle road racers from across the globe. The first week is dominated by practice sessions followed by a week of racing.

The Supertwin race involves twin-cylinder 700cc machines derived from middleweight road motorcycles turned into racing bikes.

Related Topics

• Isle of Man

• Entertainment
• Celebrities
• Ticket Sales

trending now

Latest swing state polls suggest Trump could score decisive...

Autopsies reveal cause of death for NYC lawyer and his wife...

Tourist spot is 'total chaos' with cars stuck in 4-hour traffic...

Kamala Harris slammed for deploying a 'fake accent' in Detroit...

Hamas cruelly taunts slain hostages' kin with haunting video of...

Migrants flooding NYC’s justice system -- making up '75% of...

Tennis bad boy offers to take Coco Gauff under wing following...

French woman allegedly drugged by husband, raped by dozens of...

Breaking news, doomed child star gary coleman’s ex-wife addresses shocking claims that she ‘murdered’ him.

A new documentary about late child star Gary Coleman explores allegations of his ex-wife Shannon Price’s involvement in his tragic death.

“Gary,” streaming now on Peacock, features interviews with several of Coleman’s friends who claim that Price, 39, was responsible for the “Diff’rent Strokes” star’s death at age 42 in May 2010 .

Darren Nord, a friend of Coleman’s, said his death was “suspicious,” while his former manager, Dion Mial, said of the tragedy, “We were absolutely stumped because there were way too many questions with no answers.”

Price — who was married to Coleman from 2007 to 2008, but still lived with him after their divorce — defended herself in the documentary, insisting that she had nothing to do with his passing.

“The fact that people come out and say, ‘She murdered Gary. She pushed him down the stairs.’ That really hurt me,” said Price in the film.

According to Price, on the day of Coleman’s death, the diminutive actor was in the kitchen preparing food for her after his latest dialysis treatment due to kidney disease. Price said she could tell Coleman “wasn’t feeling that well.”

“I heard a big loud boom,” she recalled. “I was, like, ‘Gary? Gary?’ And I heard nothing. I got out of bed and went downstairs, and there he was laying down on the floor with blood around his head.”

The documentary includes the recording of Price’s 911 call after she allegedly discovered Coleman on the floor in a puddle of blood.

“I just can’t be here with the blood. I’m sorry,” she told police on the call. “I got blood on myself. I don’t want to be traumatized right now.”

Price described the call as “frantic” in the doc.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “It was a decent amount of blood, and it just freaked me out. I did not want to intervene where the blood was because I knew help was coming. It’s not that I didn’t help him. I helped him. Clearly, I helped him.”

Price did not accompany Coleman to the hospital.

“I was not in the right frame of mind to have gone with him,” she explained. “I was frantic. I was stressed. Anxiety. Sad. Just stuff like that, that any normal person would feel.”

Price said she talked to Coleman on the phone later that day.

“He’s, like, ‘I have a really bad headache. I think I’m just gonna go to sleep,’ ” Price recalled. “I was, like, ‘I’ll talk to you later. I love you.’ He’s, like, ‘I love you too.’

“And that’s the last thing he said to me.”

The next day, Price learned that Coleman had an intracranial hemorrhage. He went into cardiac arrest and ended up on life support, at which point Price made the decision to pull the plug after she said the doctors told her Coleman wasn’t going to survive.

“The decision to take him off life support was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” said Price.

However, Price’s decisions during the last two days of Coleman’s life didn’t sit well with those closest to the late star.

Coleman’s ex-girlfriend, Anna Gray, said Price “was more worried about herself than the person she was calling 911 for.”

Gray also questioned why Price let doctors take Coleman off life support after just two days, saying that Coleman’s wishes were to be kept alive for two weeks in the event of an incident like that.

However, Price countered that claim.

“On the medical directive, he said if there were two or more doctors that stated that he’s not gonna come out of it, then to take him off life support. There were enough doctors and medical staff that told me his condition and told me he wasn’t gonna get better.”

However, Gray said she still doesn’t believe Price is innocent in Coleman’s death.

“I think her actions speak volumes, and I don’t have to say much more than that,” she said.

Mial pointed out that Coleman “didn’t have that far to fall” given he was only 4-foot-8.

“I personally, in my opinion, do not think that he fell,” said Coleman’s friend, Brandy Buys.

At the end of “Gary,” Price reiterated that she did not kill the “Silver Spoons” star.

“I broke down. I cried. How can people be so evil and think that I did this? Why? Because I’m the ex-wife? I’m the evil person, right?” she continued. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch him. I didn’t hurt him. I wasn’t near him. Nothing happened.”

Earlier in the documentary, though, Price did admit that she and Coleman got physical with each other during their marriage.

“I slapped him a couple times,” she said. “Nothing major. Nothing like a red flag. People smack each other. They hit each other. People do it. If you deny it, you’re crazy.”

Advertisement

Watch CBS News

Iceland police say 1 American tourist dead, 1 injured in ice cave collapse

Updated on: August 26, 2024 / 11:56 AM EDT / CBS/AFP

Reykjavik, Iceland  — One U.S. tourist was killed and another seriously injured when part of an ice cave collapsed in southeast Iceland as their tour group visited the area, police said Monday. A group of 23 people of "several nationalities" were on an organized tour of the glacier Breidamerkurjokull together with a guide when part of the structure collapsed, the Southern Iceland Police said in a statement .

The police had earlier said that two people remained missing after the collapse, but in their later statement they said the tour operator had provided inaccurate information and that all of those involved in the incident had been accounted for. 

The police force for the Sudurland region said it was an American couple hit by the collapsing ice, and that the man was killed and the woman was transported by helicopter to a regional hospital where she was in a stable condition. The police said her injuries were not life-threatening.

Rescue services launched a search operation for the two people initially believed to be missing Sunday and that work continued into Monday, but the police said after clearing away the fallen ice they had confirmed nobody else was at the site and the operation was called off.

The glacier where the accident happened is near the glacial lagoon Jokulsarlon, one of Iceland's more popular tourist destinations.

Iceland is a geologically restive nation, home to multiple active volcanoes that cause regular disruption with eruptions of toxic gas, ash and lava.

On Friday, Icelandic authorities said a second fissure had formed on the southwestern Reykjanes peninsula after lava started spewing forth for the sixth time in the region since December. After weeks of warnings, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said a new eruption had started the previous evening following a series of earthquakes.

Video  showed  orange lava bursting out of a long fissure, which the IMO estimated to be 2.4 miles.

• Cave Rescue

More from CBS News

7 dead, dozens injured when bus overturns in Mississippi

Tiger attacks and injures handler at Australia theme park

Large-scale polio vaccination campaign begins in Gaza

Ukraine says 3 hurt as dozens of Russian missiles, drones target Kyiv

Other destinations

• 52.920514 87.995369 1 Sheregesh — the all-Russia ski resort in Gornaya Shoriya.

By Siberian standards, Kemerovo Oblast is populous, urban, and industrialized. It lies in the heart of the "Kuzbass" (Kuznets Basin) region, home to the world's largest deposits of coal. Accordingly, most of Kemerovo Oblast's cities developed because of economic opportunities related to the coal industry. As a result, the region's cities are often quite polluted, although the situation has improved since the fall of the USSR. Visitors to the region's cities will find them busy, but not significant tourist attractions in and of themselves. But this is all the more reason to get out into the beautiful and unspoilt (and uninhabited) Siberian countryside!

Russian is the only dish on the menu.

Most visitors will pass through Kemerovo Oblast on the Trans-Siberian Railway , which makes stops at (from west to east) Yurga, Taiga, Anzhero-Sudzhensk , Yaya , and Mariinsk.

There is an airport at Kemerovo ( KEJ   IATA ), with flights to/from Moscow , Krasnoyarsk , and in the summer: Anapa , Sochi and Khabarovsk .

Novokuznetsk also has an airport serving flights from Moscow (Domodedovo and Vnukovo Airports), Saint Petersburg , Tomsk and in the summer: Sochi , Krasnodar , and Anapa .

Rail is the most important means of transport in this industrialized region on the Trans-Siberian Railway . The most important junction town is Yurga, junction for the branch going south to Kemerovo .

• Horseback Riding
• Alpine Sports
• Looking for Yeti .  

The next major stops on the Trans-Siberian Railway are Novosibirsk to the west and Achinsk and Krasnoyarsk to the east.

Travelers heading to Tomsk should take the branch from the Trans-Siberian Railway junction at Taiga.

• Has custom banner
• Has mapframe
• Has map markers
• Do listing with no coordinates
• Outline regions
• Outline articles
• Region articles
• Bottom-level regions
• Has Geo parameter
• Western Siberia
• All destination articles
• Pages with maps

Navigation menu