Girl, 9, smashes through window in skiing horror
A GIRL aged nine suffered a fractured skull in a horrific accident yesterday when she veered off a ski slope ‘like a rocket’ and smashed into a hut.
India Furness lost control on an icy slope and crashed through a safety net and a wooden fence before hurtling through the hut’s window.
She was airlifted to hospital in a coma but regained consciousness and doctors said her injuries were severe but not life-threatening.
An emergency medic said she was travelling at about 30mph but her helmet probably saved her life in the terrifying crash on Austria’s highest mountain, the Grossglockner.
India was on the second day of a family holiday in the Tyrolean resort of Goldried, near Innsbruck, with her parents and two older sisters. The family were skiing together when the accident happened.
Officials said the family, from Cerne Abbas, Dorset, were on a steep ‘black’ piste – the most difficult ski rating – when India appeared to lose control.
The schoolgirl hurtled down the slope and careered into the disused wooden cabin, smashing through the first-floor window and across the room before coming to a halt on the far side of the hut, 16ft from the shattered window. Her par ents and sisters raced to her side and her father Nigel, 50, a landscape designer, and mother Helen, 45, a caterer, called rescuers from the slope.
Medics found the child slumped unconscious against the hut wall. She was taken to Innsbruck University Hospital, where she was last night in intensive care.
Dr Wolfgang Kratzer, who treated her in the helicopter, said: ‘Judging by how far she was inside the hut, she was going way too fast. She must have flown through the window like a rocket.’
He added: ‘She would have been travelling at at least 50km per hour (30mph). She has woken from her coma and the prognosis is good. There are no signs of brain injury.
‘She was very lucky. She had good equipment. Her ski helmet saved her life.’ Officials said the family were competent skiers but icy conditions had made the slope particularly difficult. Police are investigating the accident but said no-one else appeared to have been involved and conditions were clear.
Police spokesman Walter Moser said: ‘ The snow is extremely icy at the moment. It makes it very difficult to slow down and she seems to have picked up too much speed and lost control as a result.’
India was holidaying with her parents and sisters, Scarlet, 14, and Alice, 12.
Mr Furness is a parish councillor in Cerne Abbas, best known for the ancient chalk figure of a 180ft naked man, carved into a hillside.
Neighbours described Mr and Mrs Furness and their daughters as a ‘lovely family’, well known in the village, where they run a catering business.
India’s accident is the latest in a series of incidents involving British skiers recently.
Ed How, 37, a Charterhouse School teacher, died in Val d’isere last month, a week after Thomas Lynch, 22, from Leicestershire, was killed when he crashed into a snowmaking cannon, also in the French Alps.
In February, Tracy Boland, 46, from Marlow in Buckinghamshire, died in Austria after colliding with another skier.