Video | Video: moment snowboarder is rescued after being buried by an avalanche at California ski resort
The avalanche that hit Friday at the Squaw Valley Ski Resort caught five people – one day after a snowboarder died there during a blizzard as a winter storm rolled through California
Dramatic video taken by a snowboarder shows the aftermath of an avalanche in Northern California, with people furiously digging out a man buried alive under snow.
One of the videos begins with a woman lying on the encased man, Evan Huck. She carefully clears snow from his face as others work to free his body using their hands and shovels.
“Just keep digging around him,” someone says.
“He’s breathing.”
Another man says: “Whoever spotted that snowboard sticking out, good job.”
Heather Turning, a Roseville, California resident, who was snowboarding at Squaw Valley Ski Resort when the avalanche hit on Friday, helped dig Huck out and said that the whole time he kept asking if his wife was OK.
As she helped Huck, Turning’s boyfriend, Michael Parker, shot video of the rescue effort. In a second video, Huck’s wife can be heard pleading, “Please, please, please,” praying for her husband to live.
Parker said when he first saw Huck trapped in the snow he thought the worst.
“His lips were blue,” Parker said.
“For a second I thought, ‘Oh gosh, I think he’s gone, but as soon as I got closer I was like, ‘No, he’s good, he’s good.”
Huck’s wife, Kahlynn Huck, had been buried nearly up to her neck but was able to eventually free herself while the others helped her husband.
Kahlynn Huck said in an Instagram post that she and her husband had been snowboarding when the avalanche “slammed into our backs and tossed us down mountain.”
“It was six minutes until Evan was uncovered and he had passed out from lack of oxygen soon after burial,” she wrote.
“He came to on his own again once the rescuer was touching his cheeks.”
Kahlynn Huck credited the ski resort’s rescuers and all the regular skiers and snowboarders like Turning who helped her husband.
“You are heroes and we’re eternally grateful,” she said.
Parker said the videos he shot showed the best of humanity and that he’s grateful everyone is OK, especially after witnessing the avalanche.
“I saw it coming,” Parker said.
“It’s everything you ever imagined – every movie and Discovery Channel show. You couldn’t think or hear, you just hold on for dear life.”
The avalanche occurred hours after the body of a missing snowboarder was found at the same resort.
Wenyu Zhang, 42, vanished Thursday as the region was hit by a blizzard packing winds gusting to nearly 241kph over the ridge tops. It dumped 1 metre of snow in the mountains.
