Rescuers continued their search for survivors of the Snowy Mountains landslide in Australia last night as more tales of horror emerged. Police said one of the estimated 20 victims of the disaster at the Thredbo ski resort was a woman taking a stroll with her husband.
"He was walking on the road with his wife, he happened to be a few paces ahead of her," Chief Supt Bruce Johnston said. "She was gathered up in the slippage. We haven't found her yet."
So far the emergency services have recovered the body of one man from the wreckage of the two ski lodges levelled by the avalanche of mud, rock and trees.
The team of several hundred worked in freezing conditions last night at an altitude of 5,000 ft and was expected to recover more victims before dawn.
Most people in the resort would have been asleep when, just before midnight on Wednesday, a chunk of cliff on the Alpine Way road above them suddenly gave way. Geophysicists are not sure what caused the collapse but locals have blamed underground springs.
The YMCA Carinya Lodge, which had just one occupant, slid 30 ft down the slopes of the Thredbo Valley and into the Bimbadeen Lodge, where 18 resort staff were staying.
Supt Johnston said it could take two more days to recover all those missing, because rubble had to be removed carefully to avoid another landslide. "It is like a house of cards, a set of dominoes: if you move something, you have to be sure something else is not going to follow it," he said.
But with overnight temperatures dropping to minus 10 C, it was feared that hypothermia would claim any survivors.
"The longer it goes, obviously their chances are diminishing. We have to be careful. It may well be that something we do could cause further slippage," Supt Johnston said.
Sound equipment and fibre-optics cameras have failed to detect any sign of life under tons of unstable rubble.
There were cries for help from the wreckage immediately after the landslide.
Mr Bill Stanley, who was staying in the lodge next to the slip zone, said: "There wasn't any panic. It was just a stunned recognition that there had been a bloody disaster."
Glenn Milne, a television reporter on holiday at a lodge next to the crushed buildings, described hearing a sound "like the strongest wind you could imagine" when the slide struck.
"It just hit our lodge and the whole building shook and the windows rattled. Just the rush of wind did that," he said.
Holidaymakers trying to clear debris to reach survivors were ordered away by the police because of the danger of further collapse. Firemen used thermal imaging cameras to detect body heat and even called victims' mobile phones in case they could answer. But they had no luck.
The police have not released the victims' names, but it is known that most of the 18 staying at the lodge were from Australia. One was from New Zealand and a ski instructor couple identified only as Mim and Mike were from California.