No injuries reported in ski resort avalanche in Austria's Tyrol region

No injuries reported in ski resort avalanche in Austria’s Tyrol region{mosimage}VIENNA, Austria – A continued onslaught of heavy snow fall in Austria’s Alpine regions caused at least one avalanche Sunday and led authorities to urge hikers and skiers to avoid the areas deemed most prone to snow slides.

In Tyrol, fresh snow triggered an avalanche shortly after noon on a slope in a ski resort in the Zillertal region, but there were no reports of injuries. Because the slope was open to skiers, authorities feared people could have been buried under the snow and ordered a search by a team of helicopters, mountaineering experts and dogs.

The avalanche risk was also high in the Alpine province Salzburg, neighboring the German state of Bavaria.

Strong winds and snowfall of up to 120 centimeters (47 inches) in sections of Styria, a mountainous province in southern Austria near the border with Slovenia, put the avalanche risk there at four on a five-point scale on which five is the most dangerous stage, according to the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics.

The institute warned that it would be ”very inadvisable” for anyone to venture out on skis in those conditions.

Several snowslides have already occurred over the past days in Tyrol, the Austria Press Agency reported, though there have been no reports of any people being trapped beneath them.

Last winter’s 48 avalanche deaths made the 2004-05 skiing season the second deadliest in Austria in the past 30 years, according to a report by the Interior Ministry and the Austrian Mountain Rescue Service. Only the 1998-99 season, in which 50 people were killed by avalanches, was deadlier, the report said.

– The Associated Press