Avalanche Strikes Quebec Village

Hundreds of New Year's revelers in a remote Inuit village were relaxing after a square dance, feasting on caribou meat and oat-cakes, when a wall of their building shattered with what sounded like a thunderclap.

Tons of onrushing snow filled the school gymnasium, burying partygoers in up to 10 feet of powder and killing nine people five of them children.

"People were frantic," said teacher Anne Lanteigne. "I took a frying pan, and I was digging with a frying pan."

The avalanche injured 25 others in this northern Quebec coastal village of Kangiqsualujjuaq (pronounced Kan-JIK-soo-an-oo-joo-ak), in an Inuit region 950 miles northeast of Montreal.

The exact cause of the calamity was still being debated early Saturday. Speculation centered on a ceremonial gun salute about 90 minutes before the avalanche that might have loosened snow on a nearby hill.

Six people were killed immediately. The other three victims a mother and her young daughter and son were discovered several hours later under tons of snow, said Luc Harvey, chief of the Kativik regional police force in Kuujjuaq, 190 miles west of the village.

"It was like an explosion," school principal Jean Leduc said. "You heard an immense crack and the wall was flying into pieces and, the next thing you knew, the gym was entirely covered in snow.

People were looking for their kids, their husbands, wives and parents," Leduc said. "They began to cry and scream. ... There was a few seconds of panic. ... After that people started to get a grip on themselves and found tools right there to try to pull bodies out of the snow. A lot were alive because (the snow) was very fresh and, as time went on, some were not alive."

The toll could have been much worse between 400 and 500 people were packed into the gym when the avalanche struck shortly before 2 a.m. Friday.

Mayor Maggie Emudluk said people were celebrating at midnight and then took part in a square dance. The celebration is an integral part of the evening that also boasts a feast of caribou, seal, fish and oat cakes.

Emudluk remembers she looked at her watch at about 1:25 a.m. and that the avalanche started about 20 minutes later.

"It sounded like thunder but only for a few seconds," a shaken Emudluk said.

Residents dug frantically through snow that slid down the 500-foot hill and punched through the wall of the gym, Harvey said. The force of the avalanche crushed pickup trucks and snowmobiles.

Residents faced a fierce snowstorm, 60 mph wind and below-zero temperatures to search for those buried under the snow. Police and doctors flew into Kangiqsualujjuaq later after being hampered by the snow and strong winds.

Twelve of the injured were flown to Montreal hospitals, where three were listed in critical condition. Thirteen others, including a 6-month-old baby, were treated at a health center in Kuujjuaq.

The 60-member Inuit community in the Ungava Bay region of Quebec has only one doctor and two police officers. Inuit are also known as Eskimos.

The village, which used to be known as George River because it lies at the mouth of the river, was established in 1838 as a Hudson's Bay Company trading post.

Kangiqsualujjuaq means "very big bay" in the Inuktituk language.