The devastating event has destroyed around 90 percent of the Alpine village
A village has been left almost completely destroyed after a glacier collapsed onto it.
The glacier in question crashed down a Swiss mountainside onto Blatten and sent plumes of dust into the sky, leaving nearly all of the Alpine village coated in mud.
Blatten, in the southern Lötschental valley, was home to around 300 people, all of whom were advised to evacuate their homes earlier this month out of fears of the glacier’s imminent demise.
Stephane Ganzer, the head of security in the southern Valais region, has described the incident as ‘a major catastrophe’ and confirmed that around 90 percent of the village as been lost to the glacier landslide, NBC News reports.
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.
After weeks of worries, the glacier collapsed yesterday (May 28) just days after Blatten’s residents and their livestock were told to leave the area on May 19.
Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concerns about a thaw in recent years – attributed in large part to climate change – that has accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.
The landlocked Alpine country has the most glaciers of any country in Europe, and saw four percent of its total glacier volume disappear in 2023. That was the second-biggest decline in a single year after a six percent drop in 2022.
It isn’t thought anyone has died in the incident but a 64-year-old man has been reported missing.
The Cantonal Police of Valais said that a search and rescue operation was under way for the man, whose name has not been made public, and it involved a drone with a thermal camera.
Heartbreaking images show the aftermath of the collapsed glacier. In before photos you see green grass, blue skies and beautiful lodges nestled into Lötschental valley, but now Blatten is a sea of brown as a result of the landslide caused by the glacier and only few homes survived its collapse.
In an emotional statement, Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, said that ‘the unimaginable has happened’.
He continued, as per BBC News: “We have lost our village, but not our heart. We will support each other and console each other. After a long night, it will be morning again.”
It’s believed that climate change triggered loosening in the rock mass in the permafrost zone, which then contributed towards the glacier’s collapse.
Matthias Huss, head of the Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS), told Reuters: “Unexpected things happen at places that we have not seen for hundreds of years, most probably due to climate change.”
Many of Switzerland’s glaciers have thawed in recent years, one being the Aletsch glacier.
As a result of the ice caps melting, a 50-year-old mystery was solved last year after the the wreckage of a plane crash that took place in 1968 near the Jungfrau and Mönch mountain peaks was discovered.
Featured Image Credit: Gunter Fischer/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images / FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
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