Swiss glacier wipeout threatens two more villages as dam could burst
Looming floodwaters are threatening to strike two more Swiss villages in after a glacier collapse saw nearly an entire village become buried under snow. The shocking avalanche in Valais on Wednesday, May 28, saw the village of Blatten subjected to an immense amount of debris consisting of various pieces of rock and ice.
It occurred after a chunk of the Birch Glacier in the south of Switzerland fell off, with broken pieces of the wedge tumbling down the mountain and leaving a huge dust cloud in the area around the village, with 90 per cent of the town now being buried in debris. The 300 people who live in Blatten were evacuated before the landslide, but authorities have since stated that one individual is still missing.
Following the dramatic turn of events, the two villages of Kippel and Wiler have been ordered to evacuate by authorities as a safety precaution. This is due to the earlier landslide now blocking the river Lonza, creating a makeshift dam that could burst and devastate the two settlements while also sweeping the debris from yesterday's event into the area.
Antoine Jacquod, a military security official, told the Keystone-ATS news agency: "'There is a serious risk of an ice jam that could flood the valley below."
The army has since made a statement that equipment such as water pumps and diggers were being made available as needed.
Christoph Hegg of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) told Blick:"The lake behind the debris is getting higher and higher. And the water masses are pressing on the dam. This increases the pressure."
He added: "The worst case scenario is that the load on the dam becomes too great and the dam breaks. The water masses then rush into the valley and, depending on the strength of the material, are likely to sweep the debris with them."
Local politician Christophe Darbellay told news outlet 20 Minuten that Blatten had "disappeared from the map", while locals told the outlet that a sewage treatment facility and power plant which had recently been built could be destroyed by the potential flood posed by the river Lonza.
Blatten's president Matthias Bellwald said during a press conference yesterday that the "unimaginable" had happened.
He said: "We have lost our village, but not our hearts.
"Even though the village lies under a huge pile of rubble, we know where our homes and our church must be rebuilt."
Climate change has been proposed as a likely reason for the devastating events seen in the region as a result of the Birch Glacier.
Matthias Huss, head of the Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS), said that rocks in the permafrost zone of the mountain had possibly loosened and contributed to the collapse.
He told Reuters:"Unexpected things happen at places that we have not seen for hundreds of years, most probably due to climate change."
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