‘I lost everything': Swiss residents in shock after glacier debris buries village

Sydney Morning Herald

a day ago

Wiler, Switzerland: Residents struggled on Thursday to absorb the scale of devastation caused by a huge slab of glacier that buried most of their picturesque Swiss village, in what scientists suspect is a dramatic example of climate change's impact on the Alps.
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 were later flooded. Its 300 residents had already been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble.
Rescue teams with search dogs and thermal drone scans have continued looking for a missing 64-year-old man but have found nothing. Local authorities suspended the search on Thursday afternoon, saying the debris mounds were too unstable for now and warned of further rockfalls.
With the Swiss army closely monitoring the situation, flooding worsened during the day as vast mounds of debris almost two kilometres across clogged the path of the River Lonza, causing a huge lake to form amid the wreckage and raising fears that the morass could dislodge.
Water levels have been rising by 80 centimetres an hour from the blocked river and melting glacier ice, Stephane Ganzer, head of the security division for the Valais canton, told reporters.
Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is returning early from high-level talks in Ireland and will visit the site on Friday, her office said.
'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.