Gansu ultramarathon disaster

Common card · No. 269303

On 22 May 2021, twenty-one professional runners died from hypothermia while competing in a government-run 100-kilometre (62 mi) trail running ultramarathon race held in the Yellow River Stone Forest in Jingtai County, Gansu, China. The race had 172 participants. When a cold front struck, gusts reaching level 9 (75–88 km/h [47–55 mph]) brought rain and possibly graupel and the apparent temperature dropped from 1 °C (34 °F) at 10:00 to −5 °C (23 °F) from 11:20 to 13:50. Many runners collapsed unconscious from hypothermia while reaching the 2,230-metre (7,320 ft) checkpoint. The organizers were unaware of the scope of the disaster because they did not assign any staff between checkpoints and they did not know the area of concern was in a mobile phone signal blind spot. The collapsed runners did not survive and rescuers did not arrive until 19:00. The dead were from the lead pack due to the timing of the cold front, while the slower runners survived. The number of fatalities and the fatality...

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