At least 33 rescue workers were killed after a second avalanche on a mountain road in eastern Turkey last week, hitting teams sent to find people missing after an earlier avalanche.
A fully developed avalanche can weigh up to 1m tonnes, and travel at an astonishing 200 miles (322 km) per hour.
You might expect the impact from something so big and fast to be instantly fatal, or that being thrown about through rocks and trees at high speed would kill you. This is not always the case.
Most victims survive the initial impact due to the cushioning effect of snow. A 2007 study of the recovered bodies of avalanche victims showed that just 5% had died from trauma. Another 9% died from a combination of trauma and asphyxiation. This means that the remainder – about six in seven – died purely of asphyxiation, and could potentially have been saved.
While some buried victims suffocate in less than 20 minutes, many survive much longer. One skier was rescued alive and well five hours after being buried by an avalanche in Austria in December.
Finding avalanche victims and digging them out as soon as possible saves lives. But the haste necessary for this can all too easily put rescuers in danger.
