The bond that ties together all past and present students of Boston College is something that is strong yet intangible. This past December at The Canyons, the popular ski resort in Utah, however, this bond was visible. During what was supposed to be just another great day of skiing, the unthinkable happened: A massive avalanche down one of the slopes caused skiers to be buried in snow.
The effect of the Utah avalanche extended to Boston, as some of BC's own were involved. Brothers Brian Meenan, A&S '11, Dan Meenan, A&S '08, and Kevin Meenan, GA&S '08, were all on the mountain skiing and saw the aftermath of the slide and heard people shouting.
"It all seemed absolutely surreal, and still does to some extent," Kevin says in an e-mail. There were two victims of the avalanche: 11-year-old Max Zilvitis and Jesse R. Williams. Max is the son of BC grad Brian Zilvitis. Max and his father were skiing off an expert slope when the avalanche was triggered. According to a preliminary report released by the resort's ski patrol, the slide was approximately 600 vertical feet long and the depth of the snow averaged about 3 to 4 feet. Brian Zilvitis was caught in the movement of the avalanche, but fortunately he was only partially buried and was able to dig himself out. To his horror, it was his young son who was completely covered by the snow.
"We didn't actually see moving snow," Brian Meenan says, "but we got there a few seconds afterwards and heard [Brian Zivilitis] yelling for help. We skied down to the bottom of the slope to try and help."
"None of us had any experience or training in how to handle avalanches, [so we] began to quickly think about the most methodological way of going about looking for Max," Kevin says.
While waiting for ski patrol to arrive, the brothers, along with other skiers who also arrived to help, began to probe the snow where Max was thought to be buried with their ski poles. "We began to 'grid out' small swaths of mountainside, poking a series of closely bunched holes in the snow that would allow us to either locate Max, or make sure that he wasn't in a given area," Kevin says.
While looking for Max, another skier who had been caught in the avalanche skied down and asked if anyone could perform CPR because a friend of his a little further up the slope was also caught in the slide and was not breathing. Dan Meenan has been, according to his brother Kevin, a senior ocean guard in New Jersey for several years and is CPR certified. He accompanied the man to the other victim, Williams, and proceeded to try and resuscitate him. Williams, a resident of Colorado and a volunteer on the ski patrol, was the one fatality of the avalanche, and the avalanche report declared the cause of death to be severe head trauma.
The ski patrol response was, according to the avalanche report released by The Canyons, extremely fast. Once they arrived on the scene, they were able to organize the volunteers into a more orderly line to more efficiently look for Max. They handed out long metal poles, and continued the probing that they had begun with the ski poles. About 30 minutes after the initial slide, a girl next to Brian Meenan found something, which turned out to be Max.
"I helped to dig and pull him out of the snow. He was purplish and not breathing. I initially thought he was dead, but it was all very surreal," Brian Meenan says. "The severity of it all really didn't hit me until I was told to go and clear a landing zone for the helicopter."
Max was found about 30 feet from the bottom of the slide, and when he was pulled from the snow, he was not breathing. Ski patrol members preformed CPR and were able to revive him before he was loaded into the helicopter.
"At one point, just before he was brought into the helicopter, which landed a bit further down the slope, and with great effort, Max actually signaled a thumbs-up while still lying in the snow. It was an absolutely amazing moment to see him revived like that from the state that he was in when we first found him. He had been under the snow for around 30 minutes - what seemed like then, and now still, to be a very long time - and to see him do that while still on the mountainside, I think it was a great relief to his parents and to all of us," Kevin says.
"It was a weird feeling to think that we were walking over him the entire time we were looking for him," Brian Meenan says. "His dad was pretty composed throughout it all. We tried to stay calm too so that we could help out as much as we possible. It was pretty exhausting because of all our equipment, but all the adrenaline and the thought of helping this dad look for his kid kept us going."
According to The Salt Lake Tribune and The Deseret Morning News as well as an interview aired on ABC, Max has made a remarkable recovery. Max described the avalanche as a "snow roller coaster," telling The Deseret Morning News that "it felt like I went upside down … I moved around for awhile, but then I don't remember anything until the next day," he says.
Despite such a terrifying experience, Max's love of skiing has not been shaken, and he has, according to the The Salt Lake Tribune, told his parents that he will be back on the slopes as soon as his doctors give him the all-clear.
In the meantime, Max is being treated as one would be for a concussion, and both he and his father Brian are being treated for limited flexibilty in their hands. They are both expected to make a full recovery, however, and if Max has his way, they will be back on the slopes very soon.
It may have just been chance that had the Meenans on the same slope as Max and Brian Zilvitis, but the students did not pass up the opportunity to put whatever skills they had to use and to help save the trapped skiers.
Be the first to comment on this article!