A skier filmed the moment when an avalanche "swallowed" several people

The images chill the blood. A tourist who was skiing in the popular Swiss village of Crans-Montana, in the south of the country, recorded the moment an avalanche invades the track and he took several people.

In the video that went viral, you hear a deafening noise and you see the woman to ski as fast as possible to try to escape the tons of snow coming down the mountain.

The avalanche left a balance of one dead and three wounded. A 34-year-old French worker at the station lost his life in a hospital in the nearby town of Sion, injured as a result of the accident. No missing person has been reported, the local police reported.

The phenomenon occurred on Tuesday at 2:20 pm at the bottom of the Plaine-Morte trail, at an altitude of about 2,600 meters.

According to police, avalanche of snow It was 840 meters long and 100 meters wide and covered about 400 meters from the track with a coat of thickness between three and four meters.

Avalanches on a marked trail are very rare. "We do not know yet whether the avalanche started on its own, or whether it was caused by skiers or by falling stone blocks," Swiss expert Robert Bolognesi told the newspaper. . 20 minutes.

According to the statistics, 15 minutes after an avalanche, the chances of survival are already reduced to 50%. Interviewed by the RTS, Bolognesi however recalled that there were cases "of some people having managed to survive 15 hours under the snow".

The high temperatures of the area, coupled with the heavy snowfall of the previous weeks, have increased the risk of avalanches in many resorts in this part of the Alps, at a time of high numbers of skiers, on vacation.