Helicopters evacuate 500 trapped skiers in Austria

The Austrian army evacuated 500 guests – half of them schoolchildren on a ski course – from an alpine village isolated by avalanches today.

The road leading to Planneralm village, 115 miles south-west of Vienna, was cut off by several avalanches yesterday. The army used eight helicopters for the evacuation.

Helicopters were also surveying other roads that had been cut off to determine which ones could be cleared without risking the workers being trapped in new avalanches.

Experts set the avalanche risk for the province of Upper Austria and the northern part of the Styria province – which includes Planneralm – at five on a five-step scale, meaning that snow cover is very unstable and that avalanches could occur even in moderately steep areas without any triggering factor.

In the popular ski resort of Kitzbuehel in the province of Tyrol, the risk was assessed at four, meaning that snow slides could occur spontaneously in steep areas and could easily be triggered by any disturbance, such as skiers. Other ski resorts had their warning levels reduced to a more normal level of three.