A SEVEN YEAR OLD Melbourne boy who wandered away from his family on Mount Buller has died after he was buried in a snow dump for nearly two hours.
The boy was playing with his parents and two siblings outside their chalet yesterday afternoon when they noticed that he had disappeared.
They searched for him for 20 minutes before raising the alarm just before 5pm.
A huge search effort was launched involving police, CFA volunteers and ski patrol.
Ski patrollers, using their avalanche training skills, found the unsconcious boy buried under snow about 50m from the family’s chalet at 6.30pm.
They took the boy to the Mt Buller Medical Centre, where he went into cardiac arrest.
Doctors and paramedics tried to revive for the him for more than an hour, but he couldn’t be saved, Ambulance Victoria spokesperson Paul Bentley said.
Acting Sergeant Matt Bennett told 3AW that it was believed the boy was buried by snow that fell from the roof of a building.
“There have been recent snow falls at Mt Buller,” he said.
“The conditions last night were fairly appalling.”
The boy’s family had been on the mountain for only a few days and it was believed to be their first time at the snow.
They were staying at Mt Buller Chalet Apartments.
Premier Denis Napthine said he was advised late last night of the boy’s death, and said it was “an absolute tragedy”.
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Terry Ryan told 3AW it was zero degrees celsius, wet and windy on Mt Buller at the time the boy went missing.
“But the apparent temperature would have felt like -9 degrees or -10 degrees,” he said.
The boy’s death is being treated as non-suspicious.
Source: Herald Sun