Deadly Avalanche Strikes Austrian Resort

An avalanche thundered through a western Austrian ski resort Tuesday, burying about 55 people in the worst of a deadly crush of Alpine snowslides that has left dozens killed or missing and 60,000 trapped by hostile elements besieging Europe’s poshest winter playgrounds.

A raging blizzard prevented Austrian army rescue teams with search dogs from reaching the disaster scene in the town of Galtuer, just north of the Swiss border, leaving the grim task of extracting the dead and injured to stunned survivors in the town sheltering about 2,000 tourists.

“You can’t find a single person at home in this village now--they are all fighting to reach those still alive at the accident site,” a spokesman for the Austrian Tourist Assn. said by telephone.

By nighttime, the bodies of eight victims had been recovered and 20 others were rescued alive, although several had suffered life-threatening injuries, said Paul Woell, emergency services spokesman for the region that includes Galtuer. Reuters news agency reported that the death toll had risen today to nine and that 29 people had been found alive.

The avalanche in Galtuer was the latest in a series of fatal snowslides this season that began two weeks ago in the French resort of Chamonix, where 12 people were killed in the snow mass and 20 chalets were buried.

Weeks of heavy snowfall have inflicted what is likely to prove the worst ski-season death toll in nearly 20 years, prompting European governments to caution against travel to the paralyzed Alpine regions where roads and railways are blocked by snow. In Switzerland, 40,000 skiers were stranded at their resorts by heavy snowfall, and 20,000 were trapped in Austria’s Tirol province. Galtuer, in the Tirolean region, had been cut off since last Wednesday.

The storms raging from Germany to the southern flanks of the Alps have coincided with one of the busiest weeks for the region’s ski industry, with students on winter holiday breaks in much of Europe and most Alpine resorts booked to capacity.

As conditions at the most exclusive European ski resorts turned hazardous over the weekend, well-heeled celebrities and royals were evacuated by helicopter. Princess Caroline of Monaco and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands were airlifted out of Lech, while Beatrix’s husband, Prince Claus, remained stranded at the western Austrian resort.

Avalanche risks throughout western Austria and much of Switzerland will remain “extremely dangerous” for the next few days, the Austrian weather service said.

Hours before the Austrian slide Tuesday, a 35-year-old German woman was crushed to death by an avalanche in Sportgastein, near the Austrian-German border, and an Italian woman was killed inside her home when it was smothered by snow in Aosta. Three people have died in Austria’s Montafon valley since Monday.

Rescuers in Evolene, Switzerland, found five more bodies from among 10 buried in avalanches Sunday, Reuters said. Three people were still missing.

Deadly avalanches also have struck as far east as the Carpathians in Romania, where two Czech students missing since Sunday have been given up for dead.

Earlier, Austrian army Maj. Thomas Schoenherr had told journalists that about 55 people were feared missing under the deadly shroud of snow in Galtuer; police and local media estimates of the number of victims varied from 30 to 60.

“Suddenly there was tremendous darkness and then a huge shock wave,” eyewitness Martina Forcher told Germany’s ZDF television Tuesday in a half-hour news special, “Death in the Alps.”

The makeshift rescue effort was suspended for the night with about two dozen people still believed trapped too deep in the snow to be reached by those working with bare hands and the town’s limited rescue equipment.

Emergency workers gathering in Landeck, about 40 miles east of the scene of nature’s wreckage, were not expected to reach Galtuer by helicopter until after sunrise today at the earliest, the Antenne Tirol regional broadcast said.

In addition to avalanches, melting snow in lower regions of Central Europe has added flooding dangers to the transport chaos. In Germany, France and Hungary, swollen rivers closed highways and forced hundreds of families to abandon their homes for higher ground Tuesday.

Germany’s Deutsche Bahn rail service canceled at least 80 trains Tuesday because of weather-related obstructions.