Swiss village mostly destroyed as glacier collapse triggers ‘major catastrophe’

Geneva: A huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down a Swiss mountainside on Wednesday, sending plumes of dust skyward and coating with mud nearly an entire alpine village that authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution.

Video on social media and Swiss TV showed the mudslide near Blatten, in the southern Lotschental valley, with homes and buildings partially submerged under a mass of brownish sludge. Regional police said a 64-year-old man was reported missing, and search and rescue operations involving a drone with thermal camera were under way.

“What I can tell you at the moment is that about 90 per cent of the village is covered or destroyed, so it’s a major catastrophe that has happened here in Blatten,” Stephane Ganzer, the head of security in the southern Valais region, told local TV channel Canal9.

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.

“There’s a risk that the situation could get worse,” Ganzer said, alluding to the blocked river.

He said the army was mobilised after earlier indications that the glacier’s movement was accelerating.

Blatten shown before the avalanche, earlier this month.Credit: AP

The valley floor after the Birch glacier collapsed above Blatten.Credit: AP

At a news conference, Swiss Environment Minister Albert Rosti lamented “an extraordinary event” and said the government would take steps to help villagers who lost their homes.

In recent days, authorities ordered the evacuation of about 300 people – as well as all livestock – from the village amid fears that the 1.5 million cubic meter (52 million cubic feet) glacier was at risk of collapse.

Local authorities were deploying by helicopter across the area to assess the damage, Jonas Jeitziner, a spokesman for the Lotschental crisis centre, told the Associated Press by phone.

Last week, five skiers were found dead on a Swiss mountain close to the luxury ski resort of Zermatt, after emergency services were alerted to some abandoned skis at 4000 metres altitude.

Local airline Air Zermatt said three of the bodies were found on the debris of an avalanche a few hundred metres below. The other two were discovered higher up the 4199-metre mountain, it added.

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 per cent of its total glacier volume disappear in 2023 – the second-biggest decline in a single year after a 6 per cent drop in 2022.

In 2023, residents of the village of Brienz, in eastern Switzerland, were evacuated before a huge mass of rock slid down a mountainside, stopping just short of the community. Brienz was evacuated again last year because of the threat of a further rockslide.

AP, Reuters

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