The collapse of the partial glacier causes landslides that bury 90% of the Swiss village

Geneva -A 64 -year -old man was missing on Thursday after a large mass of rock and ice of a glacier crashed through a Swiss mountain the day before.

The landslide sent columns of dust to the sky and covered with mud almost an entire alpine village that the authorities had evacuated earlier this month as precaution. State Councilor Stéphane Ganzer told Radio Télévision Suisse that 90% of the village was destroyed.

“An incredible amount of material that thundered the Valley,” says Reuters news agency cites Matthias Ebener, a spokesman for local authorities.

“We have lost our village,” said Blatten Mayor Matthias Bellwald, to a press conference, according to Reuters. “The people are under the rubble. We will rebuild ourselves.”

The Cantonal Police of Valais said that a search and rescue operation was underway for the missing man, whose name was not made public, and that he involved a drone with a thermal chamber.

The regional government said in a statement that a large part of the birch glacier over the people had broken, causing landslide, which also buried the nearby bed of the Lonza River, which increases the possibility of water flows in examination.

“There is a serious risk of an ice jam that could flood the Valley below,” said Antoine Jacquod, a military security official, to the Keystone-Ats news agency. “We are going to try to evaluate its dimensions today.”

As a precaution, 16 people were evacuated on Wednesday by two towns located downstream of the disaster area.

“It’s like a mountain and, of course, creates a small lake that becomes larger,” said Raphael Mayoraz, the cantonal official in charge of natural risk management, Wednesday night.

The video on social networks and Swiss television showed that the landslide near Blatten, in the south of the Lötschental Valley, partially submerged houses and other buildings under a brownish mud mass.

In recent days, the authorities had ordered the evacuation of about 300 people, as well as all cattle, in the village amid fears that the 52 million cubic feet glacier run the risk of collapse.

Meanwhile, the Cantonal Government of Valais has asked the Army to provide cleaning equipment and bombs to ensure the river bed.

“The deposit … is not very stable, and the flow of debris is possible within the deposit itself (which) makes any intervention in the disaster area impossible for the moment,” said the cantonal authorities, and added that there was a risk on both sides of the valley.

Swiss glacologists have repeatedly expressed concern about a thaw in recent years, a largely attributed to global warming – That has accelerated the withdrawal of glaciers in Switzerland.

The alpine country without a coast has most of the glaciers of any country in Europe, and saw that 4% of its total glacier volume disappeared in 2023. That was the second largest decrease in a single year after a 6% drop in 2022.

The incident arrives only days after five -skiers bodies They were found in a glacier about the Swiss city of Zermatt.

Agance France-Presse contributed to this report.

In:
• Glacier
• Landslide
• Swiss