Week-end Of Anguish In The Alps

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30586, 31 October 1964, Page 5

Week-end Of Anguish In The Alps

{By

G. R. LANE]

FOR a week it had snowed with unprecedented fury. In the valleys of the Swiss Alps the snow lay up to 10 feet thick and on the stormlashed mountainsides it gathered, glittering, precarious and deadly dangerous. No-one could remember snow like this, and by the second week-end of January, 1951, the people of the Alps knew that catastrophe must come. There was no running away; the hundreds of tiny villages wedged deep in mountain valleys were far from helo. They would stay, as they had for centuries, and defy nature to winkle them away from their homes and livelihoods. Soon many who had lived their lives in the narrow wooded valleys were to die there—drowned in the relentless tides of snow during a week-end of unparalleled disaster. Snow’ Poised On Saturday, January 18, up to 12 feet of snow lay in village streets. On the heights above, millions of tons were poised, ready to break away, and come thundering down. For days, the villagers had been looking with growing apprehension at the unbelievable drifts: in many communities, church clock bells had been disconnected. Their vibration could'have touched! off the delicately-balanced I masses. But on the night of January ’ 18. all over the Swiss Alps, something did disturb the; balance: the avalanches began: to move. Just after 9 o’clock, the | first sounds were heard. First a low mutter, then a rumble like thunder, then a roar like a hundred express trains all coming closer. In their sturdy stone houses, thousands of villagers waited for the worst. It was the worst that came. Within hours, there began arriving in Berne and Zurich, reports of avalanches by the hundred. At least 20 villages were reported to have vanished beneath a tidal wave of snow. Others were so comoletelv cut off that news of their tribulations could not be expected for several days. As rescue squads organised

in major towns and cities set out, they found unprecedented scenes of havoc. In some cases, death had come not with the snow, but with violent wind and suction generated by the moving masses. Houses untouched by the slides, were picked up and hurled hundreds of yards. In one home, a child was asleep in an upstairs room when air pressure tore off the roof, jerked out the bed, and flung the child into a snow bank. Family Killed The house was smashed and the rest of the family killed. Throughout the Alps, the story was the same. In some cases snow had crashed into the narrow valleys in such quantities that even the steeples of the wooden churches were submerged. In the village of Andermatt on the north side of the St. Gotthard Pass, the commandant of the nearby barracks had watched the accumulating snow, and on the evening of January 18, ordered the evacuation of all houses likely to be in the path of the falls. The villagers took refuge in the barracks—but one family refused to move. On the fateful evening, Andermatt was struck by eight avalanches in succession: all the family who elected to stay were killed. Army ski patrols went into the isolated valleys. In villages, wrecked and silent, they found people dazedly searching for their families and their homes. Tons of food were parachuted down | to marooned victims. Rescue Party More than a day after the i first terrible falls, the hill- ■ sides were still heavy with | snow and more was accumuI lating. Any moment this too could start to slide. Near the village of Zernez a settlement of 20 houses disappeared in a fall early on January 19. Qufckly a rescue party was organised and went to the scene. A line of men walked over the spot where houses had once stood, probing the snow with long rods. Suddenly, another bigger avalanche, roared down the slope and buried 14 of the rescuers. The survivors appealed for help to the nearby village of Zuoz. Soon a rescue party of the 20 best men from Zuoz arrived, but they had hardly started work when a third

avalanche came down on the same path. It buried a further 10 of the party. For nearly two days, the remaining men worked to extract the bodies of the living and the dead.

The men of Zuoz though half-dead with fatigue were anxious to get back to their village. But more slides had blocked the road and the railway. In fact, disaster had come to Zouz—and partly because of their absence. A customary defence against avalanches is to shoot them down—fire a mortar shell or grenade into a key spot to bring down the snow masses before they grow too dangerous. Now there was no-one In Zuoz who could do it. When the shots were eventually fired, it was too late: four separate streams of snow converged on the village. When the rescuers at last returned from Zernez many found their families and homes entombed under 20 feet of snow. But if there were tragedies,

there were also miraculous escapes. Aloys Arnold, stationmaster of the mainline station of Gurtnellen, stood on the platform waiting for the CopenhagenRome express. He could hear the train, far up the tracks, approaching a high viaduct. Looking up, he saw on the long slope above the rails, the snow cloud of an avalanche. On the express, 600 passengers were unaware of their peril. Train Stopped Arnold raced along the platform to the master switch which controlled the electric power on his section of line. The train came to a halt in the middle of the viaduct. At the point it would have reached, the tracks were buried under piles of snow higher than a house. But for Arnold’s action the force of the avalanche would have tumbled the train off its rails and plunged it into the valley below. At the end of its terrible

week-end, Switzerland began to count its losses: nearlj 1000 dead or missing; 2000 houses destroyed. During the last week of January, 1951, church bells tolled in the villages and funeral processions wound through the streets. And even as mourners gathered at the gravesides, the work of reconstruction had begun. For the people of the Alps do not run aw’ay from the terror of the snow. They stay and fight it out.