Fig 1.
Burial depth and avalanche deposit area.
(a) Burial depth for 1490 buried subjects, and (b) avalanche deposit area for 541 avalanches. The vertical lines mark the first, second (median, red line), and third quartile. Both data sets are from SLF’s avalanche data base.
Fig 2.
The length (in meters) of search area (width 1.5 m) on avalanche debris covered by one probing rescuer per minute as a function of probing depth using the slalom probing technique [13].
Fig 3.
Survival chances of an avalanche burial as a function of burial time.
For the simulation a smooth interpolation (blue line) of the avalanche survival curve based on Swiss accident data was used, adapted from [10].
Fig 4.
Probability of achieving return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) depending on the duration of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
The magenta curves refer to the three scenarios of burial time for patient 1, namely 12, 20, and 35 min; adapted from Reynolds et al. [15]. The maxima of the magenta curves are calculated according to the data from Moroder et al. [18].
Fig 5.
Probability of survival (red curve) of an avalanche victim as a function of different probing depths for a search area (avalanche debris size) of 5000 m2. Also shown (black curve) is the probability of missing the buried subject.
Fig 6.
Probing depth leading to the highest survival chance for a buried subject as a function of area to be probed for either five (blue diamonds) or 20 rescuers (magenta squares).
Fig 7.
Single survival curves (blue/green/cyan crosses and stars) for patient 1 and patient 2 over tCPR, the time used to perform CPR on patient 1. The assumed burial time of patient 1 was (a) 12 min, (b) 20 min and (c) 35 min. Also shown is the probability of both patients surviving (open orange stars) as well as the probability that at least one of the patients survives (yellow hexagrams).
Fig 8.
Expected number of survivors over resuscitation time tCPR for initial burial times for patient 1 of 12, 20, and 35 min.