Swiss village destroyed by landslide in ‘major catastrophe’
In recent days the authorities had ordered the evacuation of about 300 people from Blatten.
A huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier has thundered down a mountainside in Switzerland, destroying nearly all of a village in the valley below.
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 brown sludge.
“What I can tell you at the moment is that about 90% 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 located above the village had broken off, causing the landslide which as well as covering the village had also buried the nearby Lonza River bed, raising the possibility of dammed water flows.
Mr Ganzer said it was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured, and that the army had been mobilised after earlier indications that the movement of the glacier was accelerating.
“There’s a risk that the situation could get worse,” he told Canal9, alluding to the blocked river.
In recent days the authorities had ordered the evacuation of about 300 people, as well as all livestock from the village, amid fears that a 1.5 million cubic metre glacier above the village was at risk of collapse.
Local authorities deployed across the area to assess the damage and whether there has been any casualties, Jonas Jeitziner, a spokesman for the Lotschental crisis centre, told The Associated Press by phone.
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 settlement. Brienz was evacuated again last year because of the threat of a further rockslide.
