Avalanche
A powerful avalanche ripped down a slope at Shymbulak ski resort in Kazakhstan on Monday, March 10, with dramatic footage of the event shared on Instagram by user Kirill Kuznetsov.
The video shows a fast-moving wall of snow sweeping through the area under the chairlift. At least one person appears to have been caught in the slide, though it’s unclear if they were fully buried or injured. No official details have been released yet about the extent of the incident.
The cause of the avalanche hasnโt been confirmed. Protocols for managing avalanche risk differ around the world, and it’s unclear what kind of preventative steps, if any, were in use at the time of the slide. In the U.S., resorts usually keep steep or unstable terrain off-limits until control work is completed and conditions are considered safe but in Europe and elsewhere that is often left up to the individual skier to assess and decide on what terrain is safe to ski that day as it’s all up for grabs.
Updates will follow as more information becomes available.
