Some Colorado lawmakers want ski resorts to report injuries and fatalities
Following health department statistics showing as many as 55 skiers a day are treated in emergency rooms, Senate Bill 184 would require resorts to publish safety plans and injury statistics
Jason Blevins/The Colorado Sun
Etthan Mañon was ready to tackle the main run at Echo Mountain after skiing several laps on the beginner hill.
The 18-year-old was with a bunch of family, in town from the Dominican Republic for the Christmas holidays and skiing for the first time in his life.
“He was doing great. Controlled turns and stopping. He was eager to try the main hill. I didn’t know how dangerous it was,” said his uncle, Scott Streeb, a longtime Colorado skier who said he brought his nephew and other family members to Echo — the closest resort to Denver, just a few miles above Evergreen — “thinking it was a good place for beginners.”
“I didn’t know,” Streeb said.
Mañon struggled to stop on the run. He smashed through fencing at the bottom of the run and flew into dense trees. It took more than 45 minutes for ski patrollers to extricate him from the forest. In an ambulance at the base of the 60-acre ski area, paramedics treated Mañon for a badly injured arm. More than an hour after the crash, Streeb sat with his nephew in the ambulance as it navigated a snowy, slow road en route to a Denver metro-area trauma center.
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After 15 minutes, the paramedic in the back asked the driver to stop and help. Mañon, who dreamed of some day opening a restaurant with robot servers, died in the back of the ambulance on Christmas Eve.
Read more via The Colorado Sun.