A large avalanche has hit a small village in the Swiss Alps
A huge chunk of a glacier broke off, causing a deluge of ice, mud and rock that buried most of the Swiss village of Blatten.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
6 hours ago
- ABC News
Flood risk threatens Swiss valley after village destroyed by glacier
Water trapped behind a mass of glacial debris that buried a village in southern Switzerland has sparked warnings that further evacuations may be needed amid the risk of flooding in the Alpine valley. A deluge of millions of cubic metres of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain on Wednesday, engulfing the village of Blatten, and the few houses that remained later flooded. Its 300 residents had been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble. Flooding increased on Thursday as the mound of debris almost 2 kilometres across clogged the path of the River Lonza, causing a lake to form amid the wreckage, raising fears that the morass could dislodge and trigger more evacuations. Late on Thursday, local authorities urged residents in Gampel and Steg, villages several kilometres further along the Lonza Valley, to prepare for possible evacuation in case of emergency. The army is standing by with water pumps, diggers and other heavy equipment to provide relief when conditions allow. Authorities were airlifting livestock out of the area, said Jonas Jeitziner, a local official in Wiler, as a few sheep scrambled out of a container lowered from a helicopter. Rescue teams have been looking for a 64-year-old man missing since the landslide. Local authorities suspended the search on Thursday afternoon, saying the debris mounds were too unstable for now, and warning of further rockfalls. Residents have struggled to absorb the scale of destruction caused by the deluge, an event that scientists suspect is a dramatic example of the impact of climate change in the Alps. "I don't want to talk just now. I lost everything yesterday. I hope you understand," said one middle-aged woman from Blatten, declining to give her name as she sat alone disconsolately in front of a church in the neighbouring village of Wiler. Nearby, the road ran along the valley before ending abruptly at the mass of mud and debris now blanketing her own village. A thin cloud of dust hung in the air over the Kleines Nesthorn Mountain where the rockslide occurred while a helicopter buzzed overhead. Werner Bellwald, a 65-year-old cultural studies expert, lost the wooden family house built in 1654 where he lived in Ried, a hamlet next to Blatten also wiped out by the deluge. "You can't tell that there was ever a settlement there," he said. Reuters
News.com.au
9 hours ago
- News.com.au
Footage shows landslide erase entire village
A catastrophic glacier collapse in the Swiss Alps has devastated the tiny village of Blatten, burying it under millions of cubic metres of ice, rock and mud. 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.'
News.com.au
13 hours ago
- News.com.au
Rock and ice prevent rescue work after Swiss glacier collapse
Swiss authorities said Thursday that rock and ice piles from a collapsed glacier that destroyed a village were preventing emergency services from working, but that they were cautiously optimistic no more homes were at risk. The Birch glacier in Switzerland's southern Valais (Wallis) region collapsed on Wednesday, sending a mass of rock, ice and scree hurtling down the mountain slope and into the valley below. The barrage largely destroyed the most of Blatten, which had been home to 300 people and was evacuated last week due to the impending danger. One 64-year-old man, believed to have been in the danger zone at the time, remains missing. A police spokesman said the difficult conditions had forced the search to be called off Thursday. The unstable mountain face and thousands of tonnes of rocky debris also made it impossible for emergency workers to intervene to stabilise the zone and contain the risk of flooding in the valley below, officials told a news conference. The huge pile of glacier debris, stretching some two kilometres (1.25 miles), has blocked the river Lonza. After initially warning of a potentially devastating flood from water trapped above the debris, authorities said expert analysis indicated the risk had eased. "The information we've received from geologists and other specialists tends to indicate such an event is unlikely," Valais security chief Stephane Ganzer told a news conference. An artificial dam in the village of Ferden, just below, has been emptied and should be able to contain any downward rush of water if it happens, said Ganzer. However, he added: "It's unlikely, but we don't really like that word 'unlikely' here since yesterday, because we know that unlikely can become likely." - 'Terrible catastrophe' - Authorities are studying evacuation plans and have warned residents who could be affected, Ganzer said. "We have one person missing, we don't want anyone else missing or deceased from this terrible catastrophe," he said. As a precaution, 16 more people were evacuated Wednesday from two villages located downstream from the disaster area in the Loetschental valley, known for scenic views and home to around 1,500 people living in villages. Their views of the valley have definitively changed now. Where the Birch glacier used to sit, there is now a gaping hole in the mountainside. What is left of the village of Blatten is being submerged beneath the accumulating water of the Lonza river. A sunny and warm weather forecast means "lots of snow" will melt in the coming days, meaning "we're still facing colossal water levels" in the artificial lake that has formed, Ganzer said. - Seismic event - YouTube footage of the collapse showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside, into the valley and partially up the mountain slope on the other side. The force was such that Swiss monitoring stations registered the phenomenon as a seismic event. According to officials, three million cubic metres of rock fell suddenly onto the glacier, pushing it down into the valley. Warming temperatures have shrunk the Alps' glaciers and made them more unstable. Swiss glaciers, severely impacted by climate change, melted as much in 2022 and 2023 as between 1960 and 1990, losing in total about 10 percent of their volume. In August 2017, approximately 3.1 million cubic meters of rock fell from Pizzo Cengalo, a mountain in the Alps in Graubuenden canton, near the Italian border, killing eight hikers. Some 500,000 cubic metres of rock and mud flowed as far as the town of Bondo, causing significant damage there but no casualties.
