Avalanche fatalities in the western United States: a comparison of three databases

Abstract

Reported avalanche fatalities in the United States increased markedly through the latter half of the twentieth century, a result of the increasing popularity of winter sports. Despite this increase, the literature concerning US avalanche fatalities is sparse. This paper presents a comparison of three US databases containing avalanche fatality information: Storm Data, the West Wide Avalanche Network (WWAN) dataset, and the National Avalanche Database (NAD). The frequency of avalanche fatalities, their temporal trends, spatial distributions, and the demographic characteristics of the victims were analyzed in each database for the years 1998-2009 for the US mountainous west. The data were then pooled to arrive at an estimate of avalanche fatality frequency in the United States for the study period. While the results indicate a considerable amount of overlap between the datasets, Storm Data reports fewer avalanche fatalities than both the WWAN and NAD datasets. All three datasets report a maximum of fatalities in January and display three spatial maxima: the Rocky Mountains of west-central Colorado, the intermountain region from central Utah through Idaho to west-central Montana, and the northern Cascade Ranges of Washington; however, a large void appears in the Storm Data records in the vicinity of the Montana maximum. These maxima result from a juxtaposition of avalanche hazard in these mountainous environments with a high concentration of winter sports activities.

Large-scale assessment of avalanche and debris flow hazards in the Sakhalin region, Russian Federation

“…Therefore, the assessment of such hazards and associated risks is a continuing challenge in different mountain regions of the world, such as in Canada (Stethem et al 2003), the USA (Borden and Cutter 2008;Spencer and Ashley 2011), the European Alps (Fuchs et al 2015), the Caucasus (Gracheva and Urushadze 2011), the Khibiny mountains (Kola peninsula, Vikulina 2009;Fuchs et al 2013) and the Sakhalin region (Seliverstov et al 2008;Kazakova and Lobkina 2013).…”

Spatial and temporal analysis of fatal off-piste and backcountry avalanche accidents in Austria with a comparison of results in Switzerland, France, Italy and the United States

“…Italy: similar to shape as seen in case of total counts. (Tschirky et al, 2000;Harvey & Zweifel, 2008;Spencer & Ashley, 2011;Page et al, 1999). Our investigations -see AIC-and BIC-values in Table 2 -showed that (with the exception of the US-data) linear models are not appropriate.…”

Patterns of the dynamics of human‐triggered snow avalanches at the Făgăraș massif (Southern Carpathians), Romanian Carpathians

“…Given that there are no maintained or marked skiing pistes, no infrastructure to facilitate recreational skiing and no mechanical equipment for snow maintenance, we grouped each fatality and burial/injury into four categories: backcountry skiers (normally accessing areas to ski by climbing after gaining access to the area), off‐piste skiers (skiing outside of open and secured areas – the most common form in the region), climbers and others/unknown (primarily those working in the area) according to Schweizer and Lütschg (2000 2001) and Spencer and Ashley (). The Făgăraș massif accounted for 47.3 per cent of the total fatalities and 16 per cent of the total burials/injuries in the region.…”