Photo: Nevada County Sheriff’s Office
The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office says it has recovered the bodies of all nine victims who perished in the February 17 avalanche on Castle Peak near Truckee, California. The department released a statement on Saturday, noting that five of the victims’ bodies had been recovered on February 20 and the remaining four were recovered the following morning. They also shared, for the first time, the identities of all victims.
“There are no words that truly capture the significance of this loss and our hearts mourn alongside the families of those affected by this catastrophic event,” said Sheriff Shannan Moon of the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office. “The weight of this event is felt across many families, friends, and colleagues, and we stand together with them during this difficult time.”
In separate statements given on Friday and Saturday, local and federal authorities acknowledged an investigation into possible criminal negligence in the events leading up to the tragedy. Authorities didn’t imply they were suspicious of, or expected to find evidence of negligence, rather they made note of doing their due diligence should future civil lawsuits come from the incident. The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office referred to it as a “standard investigation” in an email, according to local Bay Area news outlet KQED. The outlet says Cal Division of Occupational Safety and Health will also be conducting an investigation and says that organization has six months to issue any citations for “violations of workplace safety regulations.”
Snow and ski safety consultant Mark Di Nola told KQED said investigations will look into the decision-making process among Blackbird guides as they learned of incoming weather and terrain conditions before Tuesday.
“Is a big storm foreseeable? Yes. Did they know about it? We don’t know when. Did the avalanche danger increase during that period of time? The investigation will bear that out,” he said. “If there was a decision … to move these people [and] at that time, they had knowledge of an increased avalanche danger, yeah, that’s a jury question, and it’s a question for a judge.”
