Luck that saved my girl’s life, by ski horror father
THE father of the nine year-old girl left seriously injured in a freak skiing accident has spoken of her ‘miraculous’ survival.
India Furness was skiing ahead of her parents on a difficult black run when she attempted to turn on the snow.
She then lost control and careered at 30mph through a safety net, breaking a wooden post before being hurled head first through the window of a wooden hut.
Fearing the worst, her father Nigel, 50, skied to the hut on Austria’s highest mountain the Grossglockner to find his daughter unconscious on the floor.
He said yesterday: ‘It was very distressing to see. She was skiing perfectly normally and tried to do a turn on the piste but it was very icy and she lost control.
‘Indy was unable to slow down and went through a net barrier which caught her skis and flew straight through the window of the wooden cabin.
‘She went head first through the window and landed on the floor on her head, above her right eye.’
After finding his daughter, Mr Furness, a landscape gardener and parish councillor, was relieved to find she was still breathing. He added: ‘ She was definitely lucky that she went through the window because if she had hit the side of that hut then her injuries could have been much more severe.’
A rescue helicopter was at the scene within ten minutes and Mr Furness flew with his daughter to Innsbruck University Hospital 45 minutes away.
There was no room for India’s mother Helen, 45, on the helicopter and she was forced to make an agonising journey by coach and train to Innsbruck. India, from Cerne Abbas, near Dorchester, Dorset, suffered multiple fractures to the skull in the accident on Monday, but a scan showed no injuries to the brain.
It is thought she was saved due to the protective helmet and goggles she was wearing and the fact she hit a window and not the wall of the cabin.
Speaking from the hospital, Mr Furness said: ‘She is very lucky and, miraculously, she suffered no other injuries apart from the fractures to her skull.
‘She is now mainly being kept sedated because when she does start coming round she gets a little bit upset. All the staff here feel that, given time, India should make a full recovery.
‘We have been told she won’t be able to fly back to England for a couple of weeks yet.
‘We will remain here and deal with the situation.’
India – who has been skiing since the age of two – was with her parents and sisters, Scarlet, 14, and Grace, 12, in the resort of Goldried in Matrei, East Tyrol, when the accident happened.
The family go skiing every year and this was the seventh trip India, a pupil at Dorchester Middle School, had been on.