Footage shows landslide erase entire village
Videos of the collapsing glacier went viral as the natural disaster unfolded on Wednesday, showing homes and buildings being submerged followed by a haunting rumbling sound.
A huge cloud was also created that covered parts of the mountain as rock and debris thundered down the valley.
Regional police said a 64-year-old man was reported missing, and a search and rescue operation was underway.
The small village was evacuated earlier in the week, with about 300 people and all livestock, fleeing for safety.
Now, shocking before-and-after satellite imagery released by Maxar Technologies has revealed the true extent of the destruction as the once-idyllic town is erased.
The first two images, both taken in November 2024, show the tiny town and its homes before the collapse.
The remaining images show Blatten after the collapse on Thursday, May 29, with the town seen covered in ice and debris.
'What I can tell you at the moment is that about 90 per cent of the village is covered or destroyed,' Stephane Ganzer, the head of security in the southern Valais region, told local TV station Canal9.
The regional government said a large chunk of the Birch Glacier above the village broke off, causing the landslide.
It has also buried the nearby Lonza River bed.
'What happened is the unthinkable, the catastrophic worst-case scenario,' Christophe Lambiel, a specialist in high-mountain geology and glaciers at the University of Lausanne, told RTS Swiss Television.
Lambiel said scientists knew something was coming, thanks to increasingly frequent rockfalls from the mountain face onto the glacier. But he said the glacier's total collapse was not predicted.
Professor of environment and climate at the University of Zurich, Christian Huggel, told Reuters that climate change had likely played a part in the deluge.
'While various factors were at play in Blatten, it was known that local permafrost had been affected by warmer temperatures in the Alps. The loss of permafrost can negatively affect the stability of the mountain rock,' he said.
In an emotional press conference Matthias Bellwald, the mayor of Blatten, offered words of encouragement to his devastated constituents.
'We lost our village but not our lives,' he said.
'The village is under the gravel but we're going to get up. We are going to be in solidarity and rebuild. Everything is possible.'
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