Dramatic footage shows moment skiers in Austria were buried by Christmas Day avalanche

Mobile phone footage captures the moment an avalanche swept up skiers in Austria

Dramatic footage shows the moment an avalanche buried skiers in western Austria on Christmas Day.

Ten people were initially feared missing and 200 rescuers were deployed to search the snow mass.

All the skiers were recovered and there were no fatalities, but one partly-buried man was recovered with serious injuries. Three others suffered minor injuries.

The avalanche, which swept across a ski trail near the town of Zuers, covered 500 metres of the trail near the Trittkopf mountain, police in the Vorarlberg region said in a statement.

It turned out that several of the people in the video had escaped and skied down the mountain into the valley without reporting their involvement, and it took hours to track everyone down, police said.

A search was continued on Monday to make sure everyone was accounted for, but police said that “according to the current state of information, it can be assumed that no further persons are missing.”

The avalanche followed days of heavy snow, followed by warm weather on Christmas Day, and the mountain rescue service had rated the avalanche danger as high.

The head of tourism in the Zuers and Lech am Arlberg region, Hermann Fercher, said that the avalanche occurred even though explosives had been set off in that area to reduce the risk, the dpa news agency reported.

Police said they would be investigating how the accident came about.

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