Flood risk threatens Swiss valley after village destroyed by glacier
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
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