Update 13 February: this is beautiful Swiss snow on Saturday!
Video (and skier): Anton Muller, at Bec Rond, Entremont, canton Valais, Switzerland (his photos and film clips on flickr)
Carnivals, cold, the down side of off-piste, Verbier and Jura reports
Verbier's February snow! (photo: Jessica Evans)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Glorious snow, biting cold in some places some of the time: call it winter in Switzerland! This weekend promises to be one of the best, with good crowds on the slopes, carnival starting in many areas, conditions great for skiing, sledding, ice-skating and more.
Weather forecast
It will take Haiti a decade to rebuild, says engineers testing buildings in the country badly damaged by a 12 January earthquake. The UN has estimated that 20 percent of the buildings collapsed and 80 percent of those remaining are damaged. Volunteer engineers who are checking the buildings one by one say that many are too safe to be left standing, reports NPR.
S1 Ortovox avalanche finder - contact them right away
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Migros, one of the stores where customers have been buying an avalanche finder made by Ortovox, is alerting consumers that the gear, if purchased in August 2009 or later, may need a software update to function correctly.
Ortovox provides images and details, in English, on its web site. Models affected have an orange on-off button and use software version 1.2.3073 or 1.2.3074.
The company urges owners of the S1 to contact them immediately for the update, for safety reasons. It will undertake the cost of updates.
Foreigners’ injuries falling, as part of whole for Swiss winter sports, avalanches biggest killers
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Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Foreign tourists are gradually becoming a smaller group among the total of those injured in winter sports in Switzerland, new statistics show.
BPA, the Swiss safety board, Monday 11 January issued its annual detailed statistics for non-work accidents: at home, doing sports, on the road.
Foreigners accounted for 40 percent of ski accident injuries, 18 percent of snowboard ones and 27 percent of injuries from other winter sports (average: 32 percent).
By comparison, the figures for 2003 were: 47, 29, 28 (average: 40 percent).
Foreigners accounted for 19 of the 39 deaths from winter sports in 2007, the most recent year noted, up from an average of 15 out of 40 deaths a year recorded for the five years from 2003 to 2007.
Knees for skiers, shoulders for snowboarders
Knees remain the most vulnerable body part for ski injuries, while shoulders and the upper arms are for snowboarders.
Sion, canton Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - An avalanche that appears to have been set off by three unknown off-piste skiers in Anzères, Valais Sunday swept down a groomed slope and sent one slightly injured skier to the hospital. The accident is prompting questions in the Swiss media about how safe groomed slopes really are, if off-piste skiers are nearby. Valais police are asking the three skiers to turn themselves in. Tel: 027 326 5656.
Two skiers on the groomed slope were carried off by the avalanche at Ayent, which measured 200 metres wide by 400 metres long.
Russia is holding a day of mourning for the 112 people, now all identified, who died when a club caught fire Friday night 4 December in the city of Perm in the Urals. The fire appears to have been started by fireworks inside the club, officials say. Some deaths were caused by inhaling deadly plastic fumes, others by the smoke and flames. Four people are under arrest but a fifth is fighting for his life, one of the 123 injured who are hospitalized. The government has banned club fireworks and is reviewing safety legislation.
Links to other sites: Moscow Times, Ria Novosti
A mine blast early Saturday 21 November in China’s northern Heilongjiang province is now known to have killed 104 miners, with another four still trapped in the coal mine where more than 500 people were working when gas levels suddenly rose. Worries over mine safety have been increasing in China, with several accidents in recent months, and authorities in Beijing have said they are improving conditions. But this latest accident, in a state-owned mine, is prompting even state media to raise the issue of safety.
Basel and Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Tests completed on 152 tattooing products “show clearly that manufacturers and users are not adequately respecting safety standards,” Bern said in a press release Monday 13 July. Forty percent of the samples are being banned from use as a result of the findings.
Government laboratories have completed tests on products used in tattooing in 16 cantons and Liechtenstein: only 21 percent, or 32 of them, passed safety standards established in January 2008. The standards cover microbiological purity, chemical composition as well as the quality of the tattoos’ colours from a safety perspective. Most of the shortcomings are linked to the chemical composition and labeling of products. The tests check conservation agents, colouring agents as well as scents. They also review sterilization quality and check labels, which should list the products’ compositions, use-by dates and the lot numbers.
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One person died, another was taken to hospital by helicopter and is reported to be in serious condition and several other people were injured Monday morning when a truck and three cars were involved in an accident in Locarno, reports ats/20 Minutes. The crash took place on the autoroute ring road, which was closed to traffic while police cleaned up a large quantity of diesel fuel from the truck.
Suva is Switzerland’s largest insurer against accidents, the source of most statistics on accidents in the country, including winter sports ones. Their web site offers a wealth of advice on preventing accidents but they also have a shop where you can buy a CD on preventing avalanches, based on the premise that people will ski off-piste despite danger, so they might as well be informed. And you can buy a range of safety items, from avalanche detectors to helmets (some just in German).
