Metal Containers Save Workers After Avalanche in India

An avalanche in a remote part of India killed eight road-construction workers, but the toll likely would have been much higher were it not for metal containers the workers were using as temporary housing. The BBC and the Indian Express reports that about 50 workers were pulled out alive from the buried containers because they had just enough oxygen to sustain the men, some of whom were trapped for almost two days. "These metal shelters saved most of them," says one rescue official.

The avalanche struck Friday in the village of Mana, in the state of Uttarakhand, per the New York Times. The Himalayan village is at an altitude of more than 10,000 feet and sits near the border with Tibet. Winters are so brutal that no residents reside there year-round. "Only laborers working on border roads stay there in the winter," a local official tells the BBC.
. (More avalanche stories.)