AVALANCHE KILLS 5

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29367, 21 November 1960, Page 15

AVALANCHE KILLS 5

8 Missing On Mount Fuji

(Rec. 9 p.m.) TOKYO, Nov. 20. Temperatures reached freezing point on Japan’s sacred Mount Fuji last night as rescuers gave up their attempts to try to locate survivors from a huge avalanche that swept down the mountain. Police reported that five climbers, including one girl, were dead. Thirty were rescued, though all were injured, while another eight were “somewhere on the mountain.”

The avalanche, more than 300 vards wide, engulfed three groups of climbers practising on the mountain’s slooes. Police said it was hoped that some of the climbers had been able to make for shelter at any one of a number of huts scattered about the mountain.

Police said 40 rescuers were called to try to locate the missing climbers. Appeals went out to university climbing clubs to assist Doctors rushed to the 12.390 ft mountain to care for the injured It was Janan’s worst mountaineering disaster since 1954 when 14 climbers were swept to their death by an avalanche on Fuji.

The avalanche occurred early in the afternoon. First reports of the disaster reached police when an injured Waseda University student stumbled to a hut halfway up Mount Fuji. A senior member of the Japan Alpine Society said November was the most dangerous month in the year for climbing Fuji. During the summer months, tens of thousands of Japanese scale the slopes of the sacred oeak. Manv make an annual pilgrimage. There are few deaths as most people follow well-worn tracks up the slopes in a seemingly endless procession. In winter the mountain usually claims several lives.