Iceland Sheep Found Alive After 18 Days Buried In Snow

A sheep has been found alive buried in snow almost three weeks after a massive blizzard hit a farming region in northern Iceland. Search and rescue teams had been scouring farmland in Skagafjorour looking for signs of life after close to 2m of snow blanketed the area in the storm last month. After finding several dead sheep, on Saturday a team with a search dog found one that was still alive. Video posted online shows the rescuers digging in the snow before the sheep emerges. "It will survive but has lost a lot of weight," Smari Borgarson, one of the men involved with the rescue, told Icelandic news site mlb.is. Mr Borgarson said he had found a few other sheep that had managed to survive the storm, but many had been killed.

"What has surprised me the most is that we have found sheep in places where I hadn't considered looking, for example high up in mountain slopes," he said. He said many sheep had travelled great distances on their farms in an attempt to escape the downpour of snow before becoming buried. Skagafjorour is a centre for agriculture in Iceland, with widespread dairy and sheep farming. The blizzard has left the local community in financial strife, with many farmers losing their livestock and facing property damage. A state of emergency was declared in northern Ireland after the blizzard on September 11.

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