A village in Wallis is submerged under a glacier, with one individual unaccounted for. - Avalanche triggered by glacier collapse engulfs a village in Valais, one resident yet unaccounted for.
A catastrophic glacier collapse in the Swiss Alps has left the village of Blatten largely buried under massive rock and ice. The incident, which occurred in the canton of Wallis, was set off by a landslide that dislodged a glacier on the Kleine Nesthorn, according to emergency services reports.
One person is reported missing, and there is currently no information on any other possible victims. The mayor of Blatten, Matthias Bellwald, described the disaster as "unimaginable" during a press conference in the neighboring village of Ferden, while remaining optimistic about rebuilding efforts.
Video footage from the public broadcaster SRF shows a massive cloud of dust rolling down the mountain as rubble tumbles beneath. The Swiss Seismological Service reported that the earth shook with a magnitude of 3.1. Previous incidents involved large amounts of ice, rock, snow, and water sliding down the valley during the night of May 23-24.
The trigger for these events was a slow-moving landslide on the roughly 3,800-meter-high Kleine Nesthorn, which maliciously dented the Birch glacier, causing its collapse. Over the past few days, nearly nine million tons of debris had piled onto the glacier due to the collapse of Kleine Nesthorn, exerting pressure on the ice masses.
Due to the danger, Blatten in the Lötschental holiday region had already been evacuated the previous week, with around 300 residents hurriedly leaving their homes. Raphaël Mayoraz, a natural hazard expert from the canton of Wallis, warned that the danger for the valley was not over after the glacier collapse. The river Lonza has been heavily dammed over a length of about two kilometers, potentially leading to a debris flow.
Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter expressed her sympathies to the residents of Blatten, while Environment Minister Albert Rösti and Defense Minister Martin Pfister immediately traveled to the disaster area and pledged the support of the Swiss government to the affected community. A unit of the army was deployed to the Loetschental to provide assistance, with soldiers initially likely to focus on removing the dammed water from the river.
Geologists had spoken in recent days of several factors that could have contributed to the collapse of Kleine Nesthorn, including the thawing of permafrost soil due to climate change and other geological processes and weather events. The ongoing disaster highlights both the potential causes and future risks associated with similar events in mountainous regions.
The Commission, considering the recent catastrophe in the Swiss Alps, has also been asked to submit a proposal for a directive on the protection of workers, particularly in environmental science such as glacier studies, from the risks related to exposure to unpredictable weather events and accidents.
Science, including climate-change studies, could play a crucial role in predicting and preventing such disasters, as the connection between the thawing of permafrost soil due to global warming and the collapse of glaciers like Kleine Nesthorn becomes increasingly evident.
General news outlets should raise awareness about the ongoing disaster and the potential future risks, emphasizing the importance of environmental-science research in mitigating these dangers, particularly in mountainous regions prone to such catastrophic events.
