USA: A huge avalanche buries cars on a Colorado highway, injuring one person

A large avalanche tumbled onto a major highway leading to the Colorado ski resort of Winter Park on Saturday (January 6), burying some cars and injuring at least one person, state authorities said. The snowslide was 200 feet (62 metres) wide and 15 feet (4.5 metres) deep and buried at least two cars along U.S. Highway 40, about 60 miles (100 km) west of Denver. A spokesman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, Stacy Stegman, said the slide covered all three lanes of the roadway and two cars were covered and pushed off the road. She added that on Tuesday (January 2) they triggered a controlled avalanche to try and prevent a larger one like that of Saturday's from happening. "We, most of the time, we know what these paths are doing. We know when about it gets heavy and when there's the potential so what we try to do is minimize the potential. We control avalanches and set them off ourselves before they get this large. We just did one on Tuesday, with the biggest charges, helicopter and everything we would normally do, so we had no reason to believe something like this would happen today," she said. Colorado has been hit with three major snowstorms in the last few weeks and Winter Park, one of the largest ski areas in the state, reported 10 inches (25 cm) of fresh snow in the past 48 hours. The avalanche occurred at midmorning at the 11,000-foot (3,350-metre) Berthoud Pass after the bulk of skier traffic had passed. Seven people were taken to a hospital by ambulance. Only one person sustained injuries, which were not life threatening.

ITN Source | January 7, 2007

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