As of: April 1, 2024, 6:39 p.m
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Spontaneous avalanches at altitude can also sweep away wet old snow at medium altitudes (symbolic image). © Maxime Schmid/KEYSTONE/dpa
An avalanche swept away several people in Zermatt. The rescue workers are looking for the buried victims. Experts had previously warned of very large to extremely large spontaneous avalanches.
Zermatt - In the Zermatt ski region in Switzerland, a large avalanche thundered into the valley on Easter Monday. The police were looking for at least three missing people, a spokesman said in the evening. It is possible that more people were swept away. According to him, there were initially no reports of missing persons.
There was a large contingent of police and rescue workers on site, said the spokesman for the police in the canton of Valais. The search area is very large. Zermatt lies below the famous Matterhorn.
The newspaper “Blick” published online videos from skiers intended to show the avalanche. Huge amounts of snow fall downhill and create large clouds of snow. A voice can be heard on a video saying in English that there were four people in the area on the opposite slope.
High danger of avalanches
According to police, the avalanche occurred in a variant area. This is terrain where experienced skiers normally ski in deep snow outside of the marked and controlled ski slopes. This is where most avalanche accidents happen. Many off-piste skiers carry avalanche detection devices with them, which send a signal even meters deep under the snow. There are also avalanche airbags that, when inflated, ensure that skiers do not end up so deeply under the masses of snow.
The Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (WLF) warned of a high risk of avalanches in the morning. “Very large and occasionally extremely large spontaneous avalanches are to be expected,” it said. There was also a great danger of avalanches in Tyrol in Austria and in South Tyrol. The reasons for this were a lot of fresh snow and sometimes hurricane-force winds, which caused large accumulations of drifting snow. According to the avalanche warning services, these are particularly susceptible to failure.
If there is a risk that an avalanche could thunder across a marked ski slope, the slope will be closed. Outside the marked pistes, ski tourers must assess the danger themselves. In Switzerland, 14 people died in twelve avalanche accidents in the winter of 2023/24 by the end of March. dpa