Alert Not Heeded After Earlier Canada Avalanche

Officials failed to build snow barriers on the hill looming over the school in northern Quebec where an avalanche killed nine revelers at a New Year’s party, even though another torrent of snow had crashed down in the Inuit village three years earlier, the school’s principal said Saturday.

Principal Jean Leduc, who was one of more than 400 people in the gym when tons of snow rumbled down the sheer face of a nearby 500-foot hill early Friday, said an inquiry commissioned by the local school board after the earlier avalanche had recommended that fences be built.

Leduc said the safety measure probably would have been costly, but he didn’t know why it wasn’t carried out. “A lot of people have this question in their mind now, and rightly so,” he said.

Late Saturday, 10 buildings were ordered evacuated as snow accumulated on the face of the hill. Public Securities Minister Serge Menard said another, smaller avalanche could occur.

Much of the 600-person village of Kangiqsualujjuaq was relaxing in the gym in the early hours Friday after a square dance, feasting on caribou meat and oat cakes, when a wall of the building smashed with what sounded like a thunderclap.

Snow filled the gym, burying party-goers in up to 10 feet of powder and killing nine people, five of them children under the age of 8.

Speculation on the cause of the avalanche centered on a ceremonial gun salute at midnight, 90 minutes before the snow crashed in.