A girl in Utah died after she was caught in an avalanche in the backcountry of Salt Lake County on Thursday, officials said.
Brighton Ski Patrol and Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, as well as the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, responded around 12:49 p.m. to the avalanche, which was near but not at a ski resort, the sheriff’s office said.
“Rescuers located a juvenile female along the slide path and immediately provided first aid,” it said in a statement. “The patient was transported by ambulance to a local hospital in critical condition.”
The patient, a girl estimated to be 10 to 13 years old, later died, a spokesperson for the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake said.
The girl was with family members taking part in recreational activities outside the boundaries of Brighton Ski Resort in Brighton, in the mountains east of Salt Lake City, when the avalanche occurred, the spokesperson said.
Two family members searched for the girl, and responders used drones to try to find her, the spokesperson said. The girl did not have a beacon, the spokesperson said.
The ski patrol from the resort responded along with Wasatch Backcountry Rescue for the search-and-rescue effort and they were the first on the scene, officials said.
"Brighton Resort reminds all guests that out-of-bounds terrain is not maintained, controlled, or patrolled by the resort and can present significant avalanche danger," the ski resort said in a statement.
Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said in a statement that her thoughts were with the victim’s family, and she thanked all the agencies that responded to the avalanche.
“The conditions are ever changing with the unpredictable snowpack. This incident is a reminder that avalanches can happen in an instant,” Rivera said. “I offer my heartfelt prayers to the victim and her family.”
Authorities did not immediately release the girl’s identity. The Unified Police Department spokesperson said her family was with her at the hospital when she died.
There are avalanche warnings for certain elevations and slopes east of Salt Lake City because of new snow brought by heavy snow and high winds that are creating unstable snow, the Utah Avalanche Center said in a message relayed by the National Weather Service. An avalanche warning remains in effect for the mountains of northern, central, southwestern and southeastern Utah until 6 a.m. Friday.
On Wednesday, a man was killed in an avalanche in the Snake Creek area of Wasatch County, which is adjacent to the southeast of Salt Lake County, officials there said.
The man in that incident was snowmobiling with his juvenile son around 4 p.m. when an avalanche buried him in the slide, the Wasatch County Sheriff's Office said.
The son used an avalanche beacon to find his father and dig him out, but his father died, the sheriff's office said.
The avalanche in Utah occurred two days after nine people are believed to have died in a backcountry avalanche near Lake Tahoe, California. Eight bodies have been found, and the ninth person is presumed dead, officials said.
Tuesday's disaster in the Sierra Nevada in California was the deadliest avalanche in the U.S. in almost 45 years, The Associated Press reported. In June 1981, 11 people died in an ice avalanche on the Ingraham Glacier on Mount Rainier in Washington state.
