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Accidents and economic damage due to snow avalanches and landslides in Iceland
Table 4. Direct loss and cost of rescue and relief operations 1974–2000. – Efnahagslegt tjón og kostnaður við
björgunaraðgerðir 1974–2000.
AmountType of accident
(billion IKR) (million USD)
Snow avalanches, excl. ski areas, power lines etc. 3.00 37.4
Damages in ski areas 0.17 2.1
Infrastructure, such as power lines 0.07 0.9
Damages due to landslides 0.09 1.1
Total 3.3 41
information from the Ministry for the Environment
for the Súðavík and Flateyri accidents in 1995 and
on a rough estimate for other accidents in towns
and villages. The largest costs are due to the acci-
dents in Neskaupstaður (1974), Patreksfjörður (1983),
Ólafsvík (1984, 1995), Ólafsfjörður (1988), Seyðis-
fjörður (1989, 1992, 1995), Ísafjörður (1994, 1995),
Súðavík (1995), Flateyri (1995) and Bolungarvík
(1999) (Figure 1). Insurance payments prior to 1983,
other than for Neskaupstaður in 1974, were not avail-
able for this study and are therefore not included. Fur-
thermore, the percentage of the loss which is borne
by the owner (typically about 5% for private build-
ings) is not included. The loss estimate includes dam-
age due to avalanches in rural areas (damages to farm
buildings, power and telephone lines and ski lifts),
but not operational costs associated with such acci-
dents. The unaccounted insurance costs before 1983,
the cost borne by the owners of damaged property, and
operational costs in rural areas may be roughly esti-
mated as 500 million IKR (6.2 million USD) and are
therefore much smaller than the total loss estimated in
Table 4.
The loss due to the disruption of the local society
following an avalanche accident is not explicitly esti-
mated here. It involves a more or less total disruption
of all ordinary activity in a society of several hundred
people for several weeks. It also involves a prolonged
recovery period where a significant proportion of the
society is absorbed in planning the recovery, partici-
pating in rebuilding of damaged property and taking
part in other activities connected with the accident.
COST OF PROTECTION MEASURES
After the avalanches in 1995, a government fund
that finances protection measures in the threatened
areas was strengthened considerably. The Icelandic
Avalanche Fund finances up to 90% of the cost of pro-
tection measures for avalanche and landslide hazard.
The remaining 10% are borne by the local community,
except that communities which need comparatively
costly measures relative to their size can apply for ad-
ditional support from the government. A report was
compiled in 1996 about the need for avalanche protec-
tion measures in Iceland (Jóhannesson et al., 1996).
Based on this report, the local communities together
with the Ministry of the Environment made a plan
for the construction of protection measures where the
communities agreed beforehand on the priorities of
the different areas under consideration.
The cost of the construction of avalanche defence
structures and relocation in endangered areas since the
catastrophic accidents in 1995 is summarised in Table
5 (August 2000 price levels and USD exchange rate).
In addition to the projects listed in Table 5, ap-
praisals of avalanche protection measures have been
carried out for Seljalandshlíð in Ísafjörður (Hnit and
NGI, 1996), the Bjólfur area in Seyðisfjörður (VA and
NGI, 1998), Geirseyrargil in Patreksfjörður (VST and
NGI, 1998), the settlement of Bolungarvík (Orion,
VA and NGI, 1999) and for Siglufjörður north of
Strengsgil (Margreth, 2001), but construction of de-
fence structures has not been started in these areas.
The cost of these studies, the cost of a pilot project in
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