Tokyo // An avalanche on Monday killed seven Japanese high school students and a teacher on ski slopes north of Tokyo, and injured 40 more.
They were among 52 students and 11 teachers from seven high schools on a three-day mountaineering expedition in Tochigi prefecture.
“All the people have been carried down from the mountain and they are now being transported to hospital,” an official with a prefectural disaster task force said.
He said seven students and one teacher, most of them from Otawara High School in Tochigi, were found with no vital signs, and two students among the injured were in serious condition.
The avalanche struck in the town of Nasu, 120 kilometres north of Tokyo, on the final day of the excursion, Tochigi authorities said. More than 100 soldiers were brought in for the rescue mission at the request of the prefecture’s governor.
A warning had been issued for heavy snow and possible avalanches from Sunday until Monday in the area, with the local weather agency forecasting snowfall of about 30 centimetres
Local media cited experts as saying it was probably a surface avalanche, caused by a heavy snowfall accumulating on a previous deposit of slippery snow.
“This [outing] is an annual event and we never had a major accident before,” one of the teachers told Jiji Press. “I am really shocked.”
The ski resort was closed for the season, according to the operator’s website, with the lift stopped and no skiers at the site, but some of its facilities were made available for the high school mountaineering trip organised by local physical education authorities.
* Agence France-Presse
