Seventy years ago, the Alps were hit by the worst avalanche season ever seen, known as the “Winter of Terror”. The destruction affected parts of Italy, Austria and Switzerland and started after a January snowstorm that lasted two days, adding 2 metres or more of snowfall to a base that was already twice the seasonal average.
Strong winds caused drifting, leading to unstable masses of snow building up over wide areas. These were to come tumbling down in thousands of avalanches, sometimes burying entire villages. More than 200 people died.
“Suddenly a dull rolling, then whistling, crashing, breaking and – darkness in the whole village … at that moment the houses and homes of entire families became their graves,” according to one account from Vals in Switzerland.
The avalanche that swept through the Swiss village of Munter destroyed seven houses and eight stables as well as the schoolhouse and the church, killing three people, a cow, a pig and four goats. In Davos, an avalanche took away the railway station and part of the line. Andermatt, also in Switzerland, suffered six avalanches in the space of an hour, killing 13 people.
These terrible events prompted a huge expansion in the building of avalanche barriers, which had proved effective in the places where they were installed and prevented even greater loss of life.
