Police: No one believed missing in Austrian avalanche

FRANKFURT, Germany — (AP) — Police mentioned Monday they consider nobody is lacking after a Christmas Day avalanche that swept throughout a ski path close to the city of Zuers in western Austria.

First responders initially assumed as many as 10 folks could possibly be buried based mostly on cellular phone video from a witness exhibiting the group close to the avalanche that lined 500 meters (yards) of the path close to the two,700-meter (8,900-foot) Trittkopf mountain, police within the Vorarlberg area mentioned in a press release.

One partly buried man was recovered with critical accidents and 200 rescuers had been deployed to look the snow mass for extra.

It turned out that a number of of the folks within the video had escaped and skied on down the mountain into the valley with out reporting their involvement, and it took hours to trace everybody down, police mentioned. Three individuals suffered minor accidents. A search was persevering with Monday to verify, however police mentioned that “in response to the present state of knowledge, it may be assumed that no additional individuals are lacking.”

The avalanche adopted days of heavy snow, adopted by heat climate on Christmas Day, and the mountain rescue service had rated the avalanche hazard as excessive. The pinnacle of tourism within the Zuers and Lech am Arlberg area, Hermann Fercher, mentioned that the avalanche occurred though explosives had been set off in that space to cut back the danger, the dpa information company reported. Police mentioned they’d be investigating how the accident took place.

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