Search suspended for missing man after landslide buries Swiss village
The landslide sent plumes of dust skyward and coated with nearly all of the Alpine village with mud that authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution.
State Councillor Stéphane Ganzer told Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) that 90% of the village was destroyed.
The Cantonal Police of Valais said that a search and rescue operation was temporarily suspended later on Thursday afternoon because of falling debris.
The regional government said in a statement that a large chunk of the Birch Glacier above the village had broken off, causing the landslide, which also buried the nearby Lonza River bed, raising the possibility of dammed water flows.
Video on social media and Swiss television showed that the mudslide near Blatten, in the southern Lötschental valley, partially submerged homes and other buildings under a mass of brownish sludge.
Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is expected to visit the area on Friday.
In recent days, authorities had ordered the evacuation of around 300 people, as well as all livestock, from the village amid fears that the 1.5 million-cubic metre glacier was at risk of collapse.
Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concerns about a thaw in recent years, attributed in large part to global warming, that has accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.
The landlocked Alpine country has the most glaciers of any country in Europe and saw 4% of its total glacier volume disappear in 2023.
That was the second-biggest decline in a single year after a 6% drop in 2022.
A driver who injured nearly 80 people when his car ploughed into a crowd of football fans in central Liverpool who were celebrating their team's Premier League win has been charged with intentionally causing grievous bodily harm and six other serious counts, a prosecutor has said.
Paul Doyle, 53, was also charged with dangerous driving and five other counts alleging different variations of causing grievous bodily harm, Prosecutor Sarah Hammond said.
Police said 79 people were injured in the attack, with at least 50 treated at hospitals. They ranged in age from nine to 78.
Seven people remain in hospital in a stable condition.
The charges did not indicate how many victims the counts were tied to and Hammond and Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims of Merseyside Police did not take questions in a brief news conference in Liverpool.
"I fully understand how this incident has left us all shocked and saddened and I know many will continue to have concerns and questions," Sims said.
"Our detectives are working tirelessly, with diligence and professionalism to seek the answer to all of those questions."
The city had been celebrating Liverpool's record-tying 20th title when the driver turned down a street full of fans and joy quickly turned to tragedy.
Police said they believed Doyle dodged a road block by tailing an ambulance responding to a report of a person in cardiac arrest.
Eyewitness video showed scenes of horror as the car struck and tossed a person in the air who was draped in a Liverpool flag and then swerved into a sea of people packed on the side of the road.
Merseyside Police said the driver was believed to have acted alone and they did not suspect terrorism.
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With a whirr of a spiral drill, Huss sends ice chips flying as he bores a hole into the glacier. Then, with an assistant, he unfurls a jointed metal pole, similar to the basic glacier-monitoring technology that has existed for decades, and clicks it together to drive it deep down. This serves as a measuring stick for glacier depth. 'We have a network of stakes that are drilled into the ice where we determine the melting of the mass loss of the glacier from year to year,' he said. 'When the glacier will be melting, which is at the moment a speed of about 5 to 10 centimetres a day, this pole will re-emerge.' Reaching up over his head, about 2.5 metres, he points out the height of a stake that had been drilled in in September, suggesting that an ice mass had shrunk by that much. In the super-hot year of 2022, nearly 10 meters of vertical ice were lost in a single year, he said. Some glaciers have gone for good The planet is already running up against the target cap increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius in global temperatures set in the Paris Climate Accord of 2015. The concerns about global warming that led to that deal have lately been overshadowed by trade wars, conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and other geopolitical issues. 'If we manage to reduce or limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, we couldn't save this glacier,' Huss said, acknowledging many Swiss glaciers are set to disappear in the future. As a person, Huss feels emotion. As a glaciologist, he is awestruck by the speed of change. 'It's always hard for me to see these glaciers melting, to even see them disappearing completely. Some of my monitoring sites I've been going to for 20 years have completely vanished in the last years," he said. 'It was very sad, if you just exchange this beautiful, shiny white with these brittle rocks that are lying around.' 'But on the other hand,' he added, "it's also a very interesting time as a scientist to be witness to these very fast changes.'
