10 killed by Turkish avalanche
ANKARA, Turkey An avalanche slammed into a dispose of Turkish hikers on a miss to a remote mountain plain on Sunday, dragging them more than 1,640 feet (500 meters) into a valley and fatally sepulture 10.
The members of a skiing and mountaineering club were taking part in an annual hibernate sports celebration on 7,200-foot (2,200-meter) Mount Zigana. Seventeen were hiking single-file when the avalanche swept into them.
“We looked up and there was nowhere to run. The snow took us and dragged us at the same time,” 61-year-old Kasim Keles told reporters from his hospital bed.
“The snow dragged me prostrate into a valley before it stopped,” Keles uttered. “My seemly hand was stuck beneath me, with my left transmit I cleared my stand over against; I began to breathe and called for help.”
A fellow hiker who escaped unharmed pap Keles without of the snow by hand.
Faruk Ozak, Turkey’s minister in charge of persons works and housing who visited the site, reported 10 hikers died on the mount. Two of the hikers were hospitalized, while five walked away unharmed, he said.
Military and private mountain set free teams assisted by sniffer dogs carried out a search in form others were trapped beneath the snow. Rescue workers could be seen probing with long rods and digging end several feet (meters) of snow with shovels until sunset, when the search was called off for the day.
Television footage showed soldiers and villagers struggling through the snow to carry a person lying on a makeshift stretcher.
“We were walking and ahead of we realized what was going on, the avalanche came on us,” Ural Ayar, one of the survivors, told NTV television by telephone. “The snow dragged our friends along and unfortunately they were buried.”
The Zigana anniversary was meant to attract skiers to the small, mainly cross-country ski resort some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Black Sea coast. It was not clear what triggered the avalanche. There had been no notification of a possible snow slide.
The Turkish avalanche occurred a day after three people were killed in an avalanche on a mountain in the Scottish Highlands.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008668791_apeuturkeyavalanche.html?syndication=rss
