The Moncayo accident, in which three hikers lost life this Saturday, occurred in an extreme weather context. This is explained by Javier Ibáñez, firefighters of the Tarazona Park of the Provincial Council of Zaragoza, and who was the first rescuer to reach the area of the event. “The conditions were bad, with a lot of air, almost zero and cold visibility, and on top of an ice area,” he says.
Ibáñez says they received the first warning of the 112 Aragon Emergency Center at 2:00 p.m. “They told us that there were a group of eight people, that there were two missing and that they found them. That they had approached a slope and they had fallen,” he says, in some first moments that were confusion. “Then,” he continued, “I started to move the operation.”
Two firefighters from Tarazona, Ibáñez and a partner moved, and on the way there were three others from the DPZ park in Ejea plus two other firefighters of the Turiasonense installation. “We reached the sanctuary area and 112 told us that the Civil Guard Greim was also mobilized in Jaca. Then we saw that the rescue was going to be impossible.” In that context, the two Tarazona firefighters began to climb.
The direction they took, from the coordinates that had transmitted to 112 the people they had called, was the spit. “We were supposed to be there, because with ice and snow it was most likely,” says Ibáñez. Halfway they crossed several people, who already told them that they had seen two of the group’s members fall and who did not answer. “We direct them towards the sanctuary. We continue towards the place.” Then they knew that it was a group from Madrid, about forty people and that that day they had divided into different routes, hence there were no two but three deceased.
In their journey, new testimonies of the tragedy that was coming: “We crossed with two other mountaineers, well equipped, and told us that they had heard shouts and that they had seen some bulge, that the victims could be.” Shortly after they located the first one, who presented a strong blow to the head and was already deceased.
At that time the Firefighters of Ejea arrived and located two injured people: “They still breathed and we each with one of them. They had slipped and fallen. We put them on a stretcher and went down the ice wall.” During that complicated they met Jaca Greim agents, together with health care. “When they were treated by the doctor, both died,” he recalls with regret.
Although fatality had already been consummated, the operation still had a hard work to move the bodies. “The conditions were very bad, with soft snow. We did three groups. The last one arrived last eight, at night,” he says.
“It was not a day to make an excursion”
After a few hours of complicated rescue, Ibáñez to analyze the circumstances of the event. “It was not a day to make an excursion. We found experienced people who had decided to return to one hundred meters from the top because you played your life,” he stories. And, as he points out, the three fatal victims were well equipped, with Crampones and Piolet.
But to the bad weather conditions its added the danger that encloses the spit: “It is a very dangerous area; 90% of those killed in the Moncayo occur there. A very steep area, with a wall of twenty or thirty meters. The injured falls to a spoon zone, which takes you through a stone chaos. The one that does not kill it in the fall. Snow and ice, they arrived at the bottom, ”he says.
Ibáñez is clear that he had not lived such a situation in the 22 years he has been as a firefighter of the Diputación de Zaragoza in the Tarazona Park: “It is the worst accident in Moncayo. It is a barbarity,” he concludes.
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