 Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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A direct translation with Babel fish
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GALTÜR. Ten years after the disaster have humans in Galtür a new time calculation: before or after the avalanche. Thus they arrange their memories - to death, to the birth of their children, to their weddings. A love story began, when the mountain village was buried under snow. Long the ski teacher Werner Jehle of the snow masses was buried three hours in the place. It was the latter, which the search crews could save living. In the hospital Zams, where Jehle was brought with leg breaks and squeezings, completely particularly worried nurse Karin about it. „Even if I had free, were I always at its bed “, say her the OÖN.
That was the beginning of a love story. It accompanied three weeks after the misfortune it for the first time after Galtür. „we married 2001, say there were the Fabian already on the way “, Karin Jehle. Before five years Karin and Werner Jehle became for the second time parents. The small Hannah holds out the OÖN the wedding picture of mummy and dad. In Strumpfhosen and pink Kleidchen it stands on the staircase in that house, which developed their father in the same place again, where it had been destroyed. Also all the others developed their houses again. Before a house a post office car holds. With letters and folders in the hand Helmut Ladner steps out. „I give no interviews “, say he schroff: „I make there only my work. “As before the avalanche. Because on this day for it a world broke down. „Its six-year daughter Theresia died “, says mayors Anton Mattle. The small Theresia was found dead only on the next day in the early by search crews under the snow masses. Dead ones are not forgotten The cemetery is distant 150 meters from this place. Snow lies on the graves. So highly that the names on the wrought-iron crosses are hardly to be read. But the dead ones are not forgotten. „There are no dead ones, it gives only living persons on our earth and in the other world “, stands on the Gedenktafel „for memory of the avalanche victims “. In the church take place annually up to four intending fairs. „On coming Monday nevertheless special will be - ten years after “, says the waitress in „the Alpinarium “, whose rear wall an avalanche protective wall forms. This dam is almost 400 meters long and twelve meters high.
In the Alpinarium a meeting hall and a documentation centre are over the misfortune. The carpenter master Siegbert Mattle from the window of its again developed house sees each day over there to the Alpinarium. Its view curves to the Grieskogel up, from which the avalanche came. „You is a firm component in our life. If I want to remember something, I think: Was before or after the avalanche? “, he says. Snow masses had shot in on 23 February 1999 „by the windows in the first stick of my house. My daughter Maria, them was at that time three, is been beside me in the office head over in the snow. I excavated it with the hands. It was uninjured. So also my one and a half years old son Lukas, which was also with me “, says Siegbert Mattle: „My Mrs. Tanja came to meet me crying from the dwelling. It could flee from the living room before the avalanche into the Vorraum. The room was full nearly up to the cover with snow. “ So also the workshop in the ground floor. Mattle believed, its three coworkers would be dead and cried. But they were the century avalanche escape. Because they had done something, which they had made never before in the afternoon. They had gone during the work time into the pub. The question about the why is until today openly: „I never placed it. It was something like prediction. That thus had to be “, says Mattle. In the moment a small boy comes in to the door and sits down on its lap: „That is our youngest one, the Simon. It is now three and a half, about as old as its sister at that time. “ Nobody moved away Nobody moved away from Galtür. „Who did not strike with us roots, tears anything out “, says the mayor: „Humans in the place together-moved very close after the misfortune. In the meantime everything is again as before the avalanche. We are normal village. There is the co-operation, exactly the same as the controversy. “ |
There was a recent TV programme, board cast by BBC I believe, about the researches into the avalanche and the subject matter was someone built a concrete bunker to see how he would survive inside after a massive avalanche had been triggered to bury the structure. It took place in Galtur after a previous fatal incident. The researcher did a good job to make sure the concrete bunker strong enough to take the force and wasn't swept away.
I remember that programme confirmed that the snow behaves as a fluid in order to be able to achieve its speed of coverage in such a short duration.
Galtur is between 5 to 6 miles further into the valley from the famous skiing resort Ischgl in Silvretta. It has its own skiing facilities of 10 lifts to cover the 40km piste with the base level at 1584m level. Being at the deepest point of the valley, as it appears to me the road beyond Galtur isn't open in winter, its snow condition is superior. It does make a skier look around before charging down the slope. The actual skiing area looks pretty safe to me now but I have no idea what it was like before the tragic event.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I was in St Anton that week, we had 6 feet + of snow in 24 hours, it felt dangerous in the street in St Anton with the snow coming off roofs etc, a friend spent several hours freeing his car.
I left by train and heard about the tragedy when I got to Zurich Airport.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Gosh was it really 10 years ago? Seems like only yesterday, remember watching the story on the news in the common room of halls in my first year at uni.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Yes 10yrs ago , I bump it !
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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I was in Wengen that week. We had a mixture of snow and rain non-stop for 3 days. When the avalanche came it took out the Mannlichen cable car station - I watched it happen. Another overnight avalanche demolished a restaurant killing all the occupants. The village was so dangerous we weren't allowed to walk the streets in the upper areas. Having arrived on Saturday we were eventually evacuated on the following Wednesday.
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I remember that TV programme about the concrete bunker being built - I think one conclusion was that the behaviour of snow in that type of avalanche is akin to the "pyroclastic flow" in certain kinds of volcanic eruptions. Very scary indeed.
telford_mike, 
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I was working from home on the day of the avalance, a Tuesday IIRC, and turned on the t.v. at lunchtime to be greeted with the awful news of the devestation in Galtur. I took a particular interest as I had skiied there a couple of years earlier and was due to go to Ischgl three days later by car. Ischgl sits in the same isolated valley as Galtur and, basically, there is one road in and the same road out. We contacted the hotel owner that evening to find out whether it was likely that we could get up the valley and were met with a resounding no as the road was completely closed and would be for some time. From memory the road was closed until the Saturday.
We eventually left on the Sunday arriving at dawn on the Monday. Whereas normally the hotel would have been full there were only two other people there - a dutch couple on their honeymoon, a couple who since then have become great friends and skiing partners. I have never seen snow conditions like it before or since. Even though it was nearly a week after the avalanche and the road had been opened, there was a three foot mound of snow forming a central reservation on the road. Trees where lying on their sides in the fields all the way up the road, felled by avalanches. As we sat eating breakfast I was more than a liitle nervous about that first days skiing given what had prevailed a few days before. Conditions in the resort where surreal to say the least, lack of customers in our hotel was reflected everywhere. Lift queues were non existent, slopes, restaurants and bars deserted. One day we skied over to Samnaum in Switzerland. A couple of years before Samnaum had built the world's largest cable car - 180 people spread over two decks. Due to the lack of patrons they used the old cable car instead - there were thirteen people on it including four of us on it when we travelled back at lunchtime.
We spent the first night's apres ski in the Trofana Alm, the largest bar in Ischgl, not sure of the capacity but I would guess at a thousand people when full, spread over two floors and a large outside terrace. Thre were twenty six of us in there including the D.J.
As the week drew on the number of visitors increased to, I would guess, about seventy percent of normal level. What also happened mid week was a huge influx of car transporters to pick up the cars of all those who had been evacuated by helicopter the previous week.
All in all it was a very strange, interesting but most of all an extremely sad experience given what initiated it. May it never happen again
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