Police investigate avalanche deaths

THE French state yesterday began a criminal investigation into the deaths of nine schoolchildren and two teachers in an avalanche in the Alps on Friday, writes John Lichfield in Paris.

Parents, police and the media were fiercely critical of the decision by experienced instructors to take the school party walking in snow shoes away from recognised trails, and without proper safety equipment, despite repeated avalanche warnings.

Police said the avalanche of packed snow, 150 metres wide and one metre deep, had been caused by the walkers themselves. They were walking in single file along a slope near the 2,000-metre Crete de Lauzey in the Haute-Alpes region near Gap. As the first walkers crested the ridge, they brought the avalanche down on the others.

Some of the victims were swept 300 metres down a steep hillside and crushed against trees. The nine dead children, from the Saint-Francois- d'Assises college at Montigny-le-Brettonneux, south of Paris, were aged between 13 and 15.

Rescue workers, using "avalanche dogs", freed 21 others in the party, one of whom was seriously ill yesterday with hypothermia. Lieutenant Laurent Jaunatre, head of the CRS paramilitary police in the region, said the rescue had been severely hampered by the fact that the party was not carrying special transmitters that help searchers.