“Avalanche” Gripping And Important Film

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 3

“Avalanche” Gripping And Important Film

The timing of some N.Z.B.C. releases has sometimes been criticised, but there can be no complaint about the time chosen for the screening of “Avalanche.” This documentary, a combined production of Cinexsa Films and the 8.8. C., is on CHTV3’s programme on Sunday evening, with the conditions in the high country now beginning their build-up to the dangers this dramatic film explores.

The avalanche is born in surroundings of great beauty; but it is one of nature’s most dangerous and unpredictable phenomena. With the ever increasing waves of tourists to the mountains, the toll of victims each year remains the same, keeping pace with the efforts of scientists and rescue patrols to perfect and improve on the techniques of warning, control, and, in the last resort, recovery. A short sequence, illustrated by famous pictures and newsreels, traces the history from the third century 8.C., when Hannibal lost 18,000 men, 2000 horses and many elephants, through the Napoleonic wars, and the Italian campaign of 1916 when the Austrian and Italian armies lost 40,000 troops in avalanches.

At St Antonien in the Prattigau the villagers carry on their lives undisturbed by the constant menace, but 61 people have been killed by avalanches there in the last 20 years. (The film company lost all its vehicles and equipment here, buried in the snow for three days. The team escaped to the valley on foot.) At the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research at the Weissfluhjoch above Davos, a team of dedicated scientists study not only day to day condi-

tions but investigate the behaviour of snow crystals in their refrigerated laboratories and the hail tunnel where hail can be grown artificially in a few minutes to the size of an orange. Outside, the men of the , justly famous Parsenndienst rescue organisation carry on , the unceasing work of making the slopes, safe with explosives and gun-fire, closing ' pistes which cannot be made , safe and succouring those who have had accidents. Colin Fraser, the author : of the script of this film, is probably unique among Englishmen in having been accepted by the Parsenndienst

as a full-time patrolman. He now works for the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations in. Rome. Fraser’s book “THE AVALANCHE ENIGMA,” on which the film was based, has been published in many countries, including the United States of America, Germany and Italy. On the night of January 26, 1968, Cinexza’s team was again caught up in disaster. After eight feet of snow had fallen in three days, the area around Davos was swept by

the worst series of avalanches since 1951 when nearly 300 people were killed in the Alps. This time five avalanches killed 13 in Davos, and many others in the cantons of Uri and Graubunden. All filming was stopped by the Swiss authorities, but after

the camera crew had assisted in the more urgent task of helping to dig out the victims, filming was re-started in the disaster area. Light aircraft and helicopters are used for rescue on the steeper glaciers and inaccessible slopes. Lower down the sounding teams of the Parsenndienst struggle to get to the buried before they suffocate. Trained avalanche dogs remain the best and fastest hope. They can cover in 20 minutes an area which 24 men would take four hours to search, and few victims have been rescued alive after more than two hours beneath the snow.

Avalanches are seen in motion, from the gentle slide started intentionally by expert skiers, to the great twin airborne avalanches in the Berthold Pass in California, involving millions of tons of snow and wind velocities of up to 200 miles an hour. The programme is in no way a depressing picture, and it pays tribute to man’s courage and skill in facing one of nature’s many hazards, ending on a hopeful note of expectation of even greater success in the future.

: This film will be of partii cular interest to New Zealanders who go into the mountains. The number of lives lost here in avalanches may not be regarded by the general public as large, but it is by no means insignifi- ’ cant.