New Avalanche Device
Avalanche Safety Links & Resources
(12/3/98)
Utah researchers have been burying people alive this week to test a remarkable device, designed to keep avalanche victims alive under the snow. Science Specialist Ed Yeates reports from the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
A Utah-based employee-owned company is so convinced this device will save lives that it buried one of its bosses today.
Chris Harmston is wired up to measure vital functions while he's buried under the snow. In the art of simulation, this is as close as you can get. In density, this snow pit is almost identical to avalanche debris.
Dr. Martin Radwin of the University of Utah explains, "Most patients or most victims do not die from hypothermia. The vast majority is acute asphyxiation and then chronic asphyxiation."
Normally, that's what would happen in just a few minutes. But this time, Chris Harmston has a portable device which actually pulls air from inside the snow - a system he and his colleagues developed under what is called the Black Diamond Project.
Weighing only a few ounces, it includes a pocket of fibrous material which provides enough surface area to pick up the air. In dangerous conditions, the skier can pop a hose from an upper vest pocket. If buried, he simply sucks in fresh air and exhales carbon dioxide through this tube. The carbon dioxide is diffused in back of him through the snow.
Jordy Margid of the Black Diamond Project demonstrates, "I could either put this in my mouth and talk around it, breathe around it and what-not - or if I were skiing I could position it in such a way that it sits right in front of me and I can reach out and grab it."
Volunteers are getting buried alive for their colleagues - some they'll never see again. Harmston says, "I can't move at all really, except to clear my mind and think about the five friends that I've lost in avalanches."
Chris is buried to a depth of more than two feet. At this point the only communication is through a two-way radio. "Chris, you have 15 minutes, you doing okay? Okay."
LDS Hospital's Institutional Review Board monitors the experiments. The first burial is cut short since abnormal icing in the pit accumulates too much carbon dioxide. "Just feeling kind of panic attack - short of breath, very short of breath," Chris comments.
But in the second burial, more typical of an avalanche, the device keeps Chris' blood oxygenated up to an hour as it did for other volunteers.
Dr. Colin Grissom, a pulmonary specialist at LDS hospital says, "I haven't seen anybody go below 90 percent - 89 percent - so that's still - most people here are above 90 percent somewhere."
Avalung, as the device is called, is still experimental. If studies prove true, the simple breathing device could keep avalanche victims alive long enough for rescuers to dig them out, providing they're not traumatized by the force of the avalanche itself.
