CO Avalanche covers Vehicles

I'm just hearing on Fox News that there might be two or more vehicles buried under an avalanche in Colorado. Reports are sketchy, but I think I heard that they either suspect, or have reason to believe, that there may be 15 or more feet of snow on the vehicles.

I'm thinking, depending on the type of vehicles, maybe there's room under a crushed roof for the people to survive until SAR can get them out. Hopefully the cars weren't pushed and rolled too far from where they think they'll be.

It's 240p mountain time and I just heard that 7 people were rescued. They didn;t say if that was all of them or not. Man, Colorado really got some snow. We need some down here.

Sorry Izzy, I guess I was typing as you were posting

I forgot who was being interviewed by phone on TV but he mentioned that they were pretty certain that there were no more buried cars after sweeping the area with magnetometers and another device that "can detect the electronics in a car." Anyone familiar with this second piece of equipment he mentioned and how it works? Car electrical systems are DC, right? As I learned from harkkev a little while back, could these be Hall effect sensors that they are using?

Just this morning, I saw a bit of amateur video taken after the avalanche swept over the road. Apparently this was taken before any rescue crews had arrived so everyone there was just a passing motorist. So, on the video you see lot's of people quickly and methodically going over the snow with avalanche probes and people running over with shovels.

And I certainly don't mean this as a criticism, just an observation. But in the same news segment, this official mentioned that the cars had been swept 300 feet off the road, down the embankment. The amateur video only showed the roadway and never down the hill, but I think it's safe to assume that all these well-meaning people (and bless them for acting) were basically looking in the wrong place. Don't get me wrong, if no one saw the cars go over the side, I would start with the roadway first, too. It's possible that some people did go down the hill and we just didn't see the viedo, but the fact that no dramatic footage of ordinary people scrambling down the embankment to look for survivors is being aired probably means that everyone was on the roadway.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because these two bits of info just reinforced something I learned--gosh, maybe way back in driver's ed--about how in car accidents, occupants could be ejected quite a ways from the vehicle. And similarly with this avalanche. The obvious accident "scene" may not be where all the victims actually are, and a secondary, wider survey is a smart thing to do. Anyway, just a thought.

In the article I read online last night, they said they hoped that no one had been swept off the road, because there was a 3,000+meter drop into the canyon if they went over the edge. If they did go over, it will probably be summer before anyone finds them.

BTW, I read an interesting bit about being caught in an avalanche several years ago (not in a vehicle): If you can move a little, but you're buried in snow, you may not be able to tell which direction to dig (up). The advice was to SPIT, and gravity would tell you which way ISN'T up. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Sue