A nine-year-old British boy and his father have been killed, and the boy’s mother and brother critically injured, following a landslide on a hiking trail in Australia, police have said.
A 15-year-old girl from the same family survived and walked away from the scene in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, officers added.
She was later treated for shock.
The boy and his 49-year-old father died on the Wentworth Falls hiking track west of Sydney on Monday, police said.
The family’s 50-year-old mother and a second son, who is 14, were airlifted out of the valley by a rescue helicopter after being sedated, New South Wales police told reporters.
The situation was “heartbreaking”, New South Wales ambulance, superintendent Stuart Clarke told reporters.
The patients had “significant head and abdominal injuries” and had to be sedated and intubated to help them breathe before being winched to safety, he added.
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The five were holidaying in Australia, police said, some of the four million tourists drawn to the Blue Mountains national park each year.
Weeks of wet weather in Sydney preceded the landslip, leaving the area extremely dangerous and unstable for rescuers, Detective Superintendent John Nelson, from the Blue Mountains area command, said.
Calling it “a tragic scene”, he said rescuers are “working under quite arduous conditions.
“A girl is walking out at the moment, who is obviously clearly [and] extremely distressed.”
Emergency services were called to Wentworth Pass, Wentworth Falls, around 1:40pm.
Police helicopters, local officers and a specialist rescue team were deployed to the remote location in dense bushland, about a 90-minute walk from the car park.
The injured pair had suffered head and abdominal injuries, paramedics said.
The British Consulate is assisting.
