Glacier root buries Swiss mountain village of Blatten, partly among themselves – diepresse.com
One person is currently missing. The trigger was a relatively slow clash. Blaten was cleared last week.
In Switzerland, a glacier root on Wednesday of the already evacuated mountain village of Blatten in the canton of Valais. One person is currently missing, said a spokesman for the Valais authorities. The trigger of these events was a relatively slowly running clash at the approximately 3,800 meter high small nesthorn, above the now crashed pirch glacier.
By crumbling the little Nesthorn, around nine million tons of rubble materials have stood on the glacier in the past few days and exerted pressure on the ice masses. Because of the danger situation, Blatten had already been cleared in the Lötschental holiday region last week. Around 300 inhabitants had to leave their houses within a short time.
« We lost the village, but not our heart »
« The unimaginable has arrived today, » said Matthias Bellwald, President of the Blatten, in a press conference in the neighboring town of Ferden. Blaten is under a very large rubble cone. Although the catastrophe only left a few hours back, Bellwald was optimistic. « We lost the village, but not our heart, » he said, called on to reconstruction.
The Swiss Federal President Karin Keller-Sutter expressed their sympathy for the residents of Blatten. « It is bad when you lose your home, » she wrote on the platform X. Environment Minister Albert Rösti and Defense Minister Martin Pfister immediately traveled to the disaster area and told the affected community to support the Swiss government.
Danger not yet banned
The natural disaster is historically « unprecedented, » said Raphaël Mayoraz, a natural dangerous expert in the canton of Valais. He pointed out that the danger to the valley was not yet banned after the glacier root. Because the demolition was stowed away by the demolition Lonza over a length of about two kilometers.
A mural can take place on the Lonza, said Mayoraz. In view of the previously low amounts of water in the river, this is currently not very likely, he said. However, the expert did not completely rule out that further parts of the valley had to be evacuated and that floods could take place.
The public broadcaster SRF showed recordings of a huge cloud of dust that rolled down the mountain with the rubble masses. According to the Swiss earthquake service, the earth was shaken with a thickness of 3.1. Before that, larger quantities of ice, rock, snow and water had fallen down on Tuesday night.
« There is an incredible amount of material in the valley, » said the authorities spokesman. Building and infrastructure are badly affected by the landslide. Drone shots of television showed a huge mud and earth surface, which covered part of leaves that covered the stream flowing through the settlement and the forested slopes of the surrounding valley. The rubble of wooden houses could be seen on the flanks of the huge masses of earth on the drone shots. (APA/Reuters/dpa)
