Word: snows
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Three-quarters of avalanche fatalities are caused by asphyxiation. For those buried under the snow, survival chances plummet if they are not found in the first 15 minutes; in the U.S., 70% of people buried in avalanches do not survive. The most widely used avalanche-protection technology is a radio transceiver worn on the body that sends out signals that can be picked up from above the snow. But these beacons only increase survival rates by about...
Much more successful is a German system of inflatable air bags carried in a backpack that keeps the wearer from sinking in moving snow by increasing the body's surface area. In 70 documented cases of air-bag users being caught in avalanches in Europe, only three died. But the backpacks are rarely used in the U.S. They cost about $600, twice the price of an avalanche beacon, and they can't be carried as baggage on airlines, which won't accept the pressurized-gas canisters used to inflate the bags. Still, experts hope that will change. Says Dale Atkins...
...take a step back in time—Saturday had been even worse. Exam-burdened students familiar with the punishments of cold, white, unforgiving academics spent hours becoming acquainted with the trials of cold, white, unforgiving precipitation. Irish-literature students’ souls swooned slowly as they heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead...
...about 2 p.m. on Friday, Norman P. Ho ’07 said he was sitting in one of the IRC offices when he heard a “heavy thump,” which he passed off as falling snow. Minutes later a fire alarm evacuated the building, bringing with it fire trucks and police cars...
...officer responding to an “alarm call” noticed a screen on a window had been sliced at a building on 9 Travis St. in Allston. The officer searched the building for intruders and the accumulated snow for foot tracks with negative results...