Fears grow for buried skiers after four Alps avalanches
A FRANTIC search was under way last night for buried skiers after four avalanches in the Alps.
Police said a number of people were missing after three avalanches hit the Austrian ski resort of Ankogel and one struck Andermatt in Switzerland.
By last night, two people had been pulled from the snow with minor injuries and taken to hospital after a large avalanche spilled onto the piste at the Swiss ski resort, a police spokesman said. Four others were rescued or freed themselves from the snow without injury.
But witnesses believed there were more people buried under the snow. A large squad of rescuers were digging to see if they could find any trapped people before freezing night temperatures set in.
The avalanche at Andermatt happened just before 11am yesterday on Slope 30 in the Oberalppass area – one of the slope’s busiest times. It is believed to have covered an area measuring 65ft by 164ft.
A British skier, who asked not to be named, told the Evening Standard he had just skied down Slope 30 when the avalanche hit the piste.
‘We were literally on that piste two minutes earlier so we missed it by the skin of our teeth,’ he said.
‘It happened at a really busy time in the morning so there were lots of people on that slope – it could have been 100 people or ten people. It’s hard to know.
‘There seemed to be quite a lot of people searching on the piste and they were digging for at least two or three people.’
He added that it was unlikely the skiers were wearing avalanche gear or tracking beacons on the slopes – which meant rescuers were ‘digging and searching randomly’.
Reto Pfister, state police spokesman in the Swiss canton of Uri, last night said: ‘We believe there are more people buried but we can’t say how many.’ Austrian police also said that several people were missing after three avalanches in Ankogel in the province of Carinthia.
One happened on an off-piste slope and buried two skiers – but they managed to wriggle themselves free. More than 60 rescue workers, helicopters and dogs were searching for people who might have been buried under an avalanche that came down directly on the slope, he said. He added that it was too early to say if anybody died.
Anne Jehn, director of Andermatt Ski Academy, was on the scene just after the avalanche hit and helped rescue a woman.
Speaking on social media, she said: ‘She was ash grey. Shocked. But I guess she’ll be okay.’
According to the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, the avalanche danger level has been three on a scale of five in both the Swiss and Austrian resorts.
The corpses of two climbers were left dangling from another man’s rope after they fell in Italy.
The men slipped on snow and died yesterday morning while trying to climb Gran Sasso mountain in the central Abruzzo region.
Police and paramedics were called in by a third climber who was connected to the victims with a rope. Their bodies were recovered from a valley in the afternoon.