OCR Text |
Show CHAPTER 1. AVALANCHE HAZARD IN THE UNITED STATES What It Is The remote mountain areas of this country are the scene of hundreds, perhaps thousands of avalanches each winter. No man witnesses them and they have no measurable effect on civilization. But in certain locations, and these are increasing in number, avalanches and mankind do meet. This creates avalanche hazard, a threat from the cascading snow to life and property. In the avalanche we are dealing with a great natural force, not inferior in power to the tornado, the flood and the earthquake. It is not so well known as a destroyer of life and property, more because of timing a" d location than lack of potentiality. During the first World War, on the Austro- Italian front in December 1916, ten thousand soldiers lost their lives in snowslides in a single 24- hour period. Total casualties during the war on that front, from avalanches, were 80,000, a greater number than came from military action. This was the greatest avalanche disaster in recorded history and was brought about by an abnormal concentration of men stationed in the mountains, abetted by an abnormal winter. It demonstrates the difference between avalanches and avalanche hazard. In the Past With local exceptions, the avalanche history of the United States has never been thoroughly explored. There was a period from about 1860 to 1910 when our western mountains were much more heavily populated than they have been since. This was the Gold Rush period. From the Sierras and the Cascades to the Rockies, miners swarmed into the high country and built their camps wherever they found silver and gold. Telluride and Aspen in the Colorado Rockies, Atlanta in the Sawtooth, Mineral King in the Sierras, Alta and Brighton in the Wasatch, to name a few, were famous in their day for fabulous riches. They were known also for the fabulous destruction of the snowslides which often obliterated both miners and their camps. The mining era was the first time that human beings in large numbers invaded the alpine zone of the United States ( Figure l). The results were often disastrous. Verifiable records of avalanche accidents in the vicinity of Alta, for instance, go back as far as 1875. During the next 35 years there were 67 avalanche fatalities at Alta. Three slides in three different years gobbled up over ten persons each. let this period was after the heyday of the mining camp, 1868 to 1873. Already on the downgrade, Alta was practically obliterated by avalanches in 1874 with the loss of over 60 lives. More than half a century later this same Alta with its grim history of death and destruction at the hands of the " White Death" was to be reborn as a winter recreation area and the site of the first avalanche observation and research center in the western hemisphere. - 4 - |