Avalanche Kills Teens and Teacher in Japan

Madeleine West, PaperClip Staff/Writer

On Monday, March 27th a teacher and seven teenagers died on a high school mountaineering club in an area of Northeastern Japan.

The students and teachers were training North of Tokyo in an area where the weather bureau had issued an avalanche warning, urging caution a day earlier. Dozens of students and teachers were injured.

There were more than 60 students from seven different high schools that were participating in the annual climb. The area had snow storms strong enough that the rescue helicopters had trouble reaching the avalanche zone. The authorities initially believed all eight victims were students. Later, after positively identifying the dead and notifying their families, they released their identities to the Japanese news media. One of the dead was identified as a 29-year-old teacher and the other seven were teenagers ages 16 and 17.

The students were from Otawara High School, which is one of the top schools for  mountaineering in the nation. There were 40 plus participants that suffered injuries from the incident. The group of seven schools had originally planned to climb to the top of Mount Chausu, which is a 6,300-foot peak. This climb would have capped a three-day training program.

The group was learning new lessons on how to climb in the snow and how to avoid avalanches. But the conditions worsened, with a storm that brought high winds and more snow. Warmer temperatures during the following day made the accumulation especially unstable. The teachers decided to have the students be on the much lower slopes. But even those conditions were too much for some students. Student from Portsmouth High, Chris Santana was asked what he thought about the students and teachers training in the conditions. “Personally, I don’t think it was a good idea because if there a warning issued then there is no good reason to be risking something that dangerous.”