Dear Authors,

Many thanks for your comments to the reviewers. I am well aware of the long duration of the review process: I invited many reviewers in the field of natural hazards and most of them declined to review because of the too strong structural engineering content of the paper. The authors should realize that NHESS is not a structural engineering journal.

However, your answer to the reviewers criticisms has led me to believe that you are now prepared to modify the text to include a more general audience which I think will greatly improve the readibility and attractiveness of the paper for NHESS. This includes a section on avalanche loading.

I am therefore recommending major revisions and greatly looking forward to your resubmission. I myself will supply the review to the revisions.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Perry Bartelt

Many thanks for your revisions. See Reviews. Only minor changes are necessary, please see comments.

Many thanks for correcting the minor revisions. The paper reads well now.