Swiss communities on alert after massive landslide
Residents in the Lötschental valley have been asked to prepare for evacuation. It comes after Wednesday’s glacier collapse dumped millions of cubic meters of ice, rock and mud.CatastropheSwitzerland
Swiss communities on alert after massive landslide
Residents in the Lötschental valley have been asked to prepare for evacuation. It comes after Wednesday’s glacier collapse dumped millions of cubic meters of ice, rock and mud.
One person is still missing after a large part of Blatten was buried under masses of ice, mud, and rock on Wednesday
A number of Alpine communities in Switzerland’s Lötschental valley have been asked to be ready to evacuate their homes following a massive landslide on Wednesday.
Rivers in the area have become swollen and have dammed up behind the rubble, rock and ice that thundered down into the valley after the Birch Glacier began to collapse in the southwestern canton of Valais.
“We ask residents to make personal preparations so that they can leave their homes as quickly as possible,” the municipalities of Steg-Hohtenn and Gampel-Bratsch in the Lötschental valley posted on their website late Thursday.Local authorities suspended the search for the missing man on Thursday afternoon, as conditions became too dangerous with warnings of further rockfalls.
The debris has blocked the course of the River Lonza and has caused a lake to form which in turn has heightened fears the mass could dislodge and impact communities further downstream.
Stephane Ganzer, head of the security division for the Valais canton, told reporters that water levels have been rising by 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) an hour as a result of the blockage
