THE ALPS: Sudden Snows

Over their busy New Year’s holiday, guides and hotelkeepers in eastern Switzerland and the neighboring Austrian province of Tyrol had gloomily eyed the thinning snow on their famous ski slopes. Smoothing their local pride, they assured grumbling foreign visitors that more snow, a great deal of snow, was bound to come.

Late last week the snow arrived, a record three-day fall that sometimes came down as fast as five inches an hour. Instead of improving the trails and slalom courses, it caused one of the worst series of avalanches in Alpine history. Tons of thick wet snow crashed down on the valleys of eastern and central Switzerland. Roads were blocked, including the St. Gotthard rail line between Italy and central Europe. Swiss army detachments futilely tried to break up the giant snowslides with mortar barrages.

The names of the damaged towns sounded like an Almanack de Gotha of winter sports. Zermatt, Arosa and St. Moritz were cut off. Houses were buried on the outskirts of Andermatt. Some 500 British and 70 American tourists suffered a sybaritic exile, stranded in the luxury hotels of Davos. In central Switzerland the 4,100-ft. high village of Vals was crushed by a torrent of snow, rock and snapped timber. A small hotel at Oberalpsee was completely buried.

The Austrian side of the Alps was worse hit than the Swiss. Forty-five thousand people in the Austrian provinces of Tyrol, Styria and Salzkammergut were cut off from the outside world. A rumbling avalanche tore down the slopes of Gross-Glockner mountain and swallowed up the resort village of Heiligenblut. Slides killed 14 near the famous health resort of Bad Gastein. To help in rescue work, French occupation commanders placed their entire 4,000-man military force at the disposal of Austrian authorities.

Early this week the deadly snow was still coming down and new slides threatened snug Alpine valleys. Already, in Austria, Switzerland and northern Italy, 177 people had been killed.