“The unbelievable amount of material has fallen into the valley,” said Matthias Ebener, spokesman for local authorities in the southwestern Valais canton. Rescue services cut off the road leading to the village, warning that the area is still dangerous.
On a recording made of a drone flying over the village located in the Loetschental valley, you can see the vast plain of mud and earth. Only on its edge can you see the remains of collapsed wooden houses. 90 percent The villages were completely destroyed.
Blatten, inhabited by 300 people, was evacuated on May 19, when geologists identified avalanche risk. Many residents lost everything – they had only 20 minutes to evacuate, they were given by the Swiss broadcaster RTS.
“It's a complete disaster” – said Franz Ruppen from the canton authorities. In his opinion, the inhabitants did not expect that such a destructive avalanche could occur. “Something was unthinkable,” the commune authorities wrote in social media.
This is not the first evacuated village
Climate change means that glaciers – frozen tracts of ice – melt faster and faster. There is also eternal frost – noted the BBC portal. Glacjologists monitor melting for years have warned that some Alpine cities and villages may be threatened. Blatten is not the first place to be evacuated.
The inhabitants of the village of Brienz in eastern Switzerland were evacuated two years ago because the slope of the mountain above their city began to slide. Since then, they were allowed to return only for short periods, he reminded the BBC portal.
In 2017, near the village of Bondo, the largest landslide in over a hundred years, as a result of which eight tourists were killed and many houses were destroyed.
Specialists observing Swiss glaciers are afraid that they will disappear during the century, if it is impossible to maintain global temperatures at a level not higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the temperatures from before the industrial era.
