Skiing: angry mountains

1989/04/01 Tapia, Xipitri Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ingurumena

On July 20, 1987, he suffered several landslides in the foothills of the Italian villages of Tartano, Sondrio and Bergamo. Twenty people were killed and houses, roads, bridges and power grid were affected. Eight days later the same happened in other villages in northern Italy. After a week twenty-seven people died in the Alps.

For some people these accidents are totally natural (when there are thunder in the Alps there are heavy rains), but in recent years have begun to reinforce some different opinions.

In the last two decades the tourism industry in the Alps has experienced spectacular development. In fact, ski development has often occurred in areas of low economic availability. The ski slopes and the roads, buildings and other services that surround them have required the felling of numerous forests. Therefore, landslides and snow have free roads. This theory is getting stronger and there are reasons for it.

Hannes Mayer, a university researcher in Vienna, measured the influence of forests on forest lands and surface waters. In the mountains that have lost the natural protective layer, he measured that water enters more into the interior of the mountain than in those that have not been lost, and that underground water currents do not create many good things, but landslides and erosion.

In addition, when a forest is thrown, other species, both animal and vegetable, suffer a change of state. Once the ecological balance is broken, it will take hundreds of years to return to the initial situation. In some places animals are in a serious problem. Some are well affected by the change of situation, such as the Swiss red deer. Others, like lire roosters, are very vulnerable and their number decreases. Besides throwing forests against these animals, pollution is also being attacked.

Floods in Italy.

Faced with this problem, people in some European countries begin to protest. Authorities have also begun to become increasingly aware, but budgets to recover affected areas are so high that it is very difficult to implement effective policy. However, we must act in places that have suffered damage so far. Floods, landslides or snow will occur at any time. Faced with this situation, the phrase used by the Italian Minister of Civil Protection will become less and less valid: I am not responsible for God's actions.

If the future is not more careful when building new ski slopes or new infrastructure, it is normal that natural accidents are known.