The collapse of partial glaciers causes a landslide that buries 90% of the Swiss village

Geneva – A 64 -year -old man remained disappeared Thursday after a huge mass of rock and ice cream of a glacier crashed in a Swiss mountain flank the day before.

The landslide sent plumes of dust to the sky and covered with mud almost a whole alpine village that the authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution. State Councilor Stéphane Ganzer said on Radio Television Switzerland that 90% of the village had been destroyed.

“An incredible quantity of equipment has tripped in the valley,” said the reuters news agency quotes Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for local authorities.

“We have lost our village,” said the mayor of Blatten Matthias Bellwald at a press conference, according to Reuters. “The village is under rubble. We will rebuild.”

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

The regional government declared in a press release that a large piece of the birch glacier above the village had broken, causing the landslide, which also buried the Lonza river bed, which raises the possibility of water flows in Dammeuse.

Video on social networks and Swiss television showed that the mud flow near Blastten, in the southern valley of Lötschental, partially submerged houses and other buildings under a mass of brownish sludge.

In recent days, the authorities had ordered the evacuation of around 300 people, as well as all the cattle, from the village in the middle of the fears that the 52 million cubic foot glacier is likely to collapse.

Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concerns concerning a thaw in recent years – largely attributed to global warming – Who accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.

The Alpine Country without coastline has the most glaciers from all European countries and saw 4% of its total volume of glaciers disappear in 2023. It was the second drop in a single year after a drop of 6% in 2022.