Avalanche
Carluccio Sartori, a 54-year-old Italian skier, survived being buried under an avalanche for 23 hours in the Val Badia mountains of South Tyrol, Italy, in January 2023. Sartori told The New York Post the story of how he was skiing when an avalanche struck, trapping him under literal tons of snow. Despite facing freezing temperatures, he remained conscious until rescuers arrived almost a day later.
Sartori’s survival puzzled doctors, who marveled at his physical condition and mental resilience. Typically, survival chances decrease significantly the longer someone remains buried under an avalanche. If not killed by blunt trauma, most avalanche fatalities are a result of asphyxiation, with survival chances dropping rapidly as time passes, according to the Sierra Avalanche Center. A burial victim has a 95% of survival if recovered within the first 15 minutes but this probability plunges every minute afterward, reaching just 37% after 35 minutes. As time elapses, the victim’s chances of accessing air diminish, leading to oxygen deprivation, then asphyxiation, and ultimately death.
Sartori managed to excavate a small air pocket while buried which allowed him to breathe. Then the cold set in, and he braved hypothermia for hours, having a body temperature of an astonishing 73ºF when rescuers located him. He sustained fractures and frostbite but eventually managed to relearn how to walk over the next several months. Sartori has even taken up skiing again this winter. His survival was miraculous, and was also likely due in part to his strong mental fortitude and overall good physical health; on top of skiing, Satori is a mountain biker and plays sports, he says.
Sartori should be dead, but he survived due to the power of his own mind. Many people die after only a few hours of hypothermia. That, paired with broken bones, makes this a remarkable tale of Sartori’s willpower to live. His journey shows his strength and just what humans are capable of when it comes to survival. Hopefully, his story can help inspire anyone else who finds themselves in a life-or-death situation, reminding them that they might be stronger than they think.
