Swiss village buried in ice-mud deluge, one person missing

At least one person went missing after Birch Glacier catastrophically collapsed in the Swiss Alps, wiping off 90% of the mountain village of Blatten, which is home to 300 people. The incident took place at around 3:30 pm (local time) on Wednesday, when a large chunk of ice broke off from Birch Glacier in Switzerland's southern Wallis region.

It caused a massive deluge of ice, mud, and rock that buried the village in the Lotschental valley.The officials announced the evacuation of the village the previous week due to an impending danger of a landslide, but still, some didn't leave their homes. The missing person, a 64-year-old man, was among the residents not evacuated.Drone footage broadcast by Swiss national broadcaster SRF revealed a vast expanse of mud and debris engulfing homes, the Lonza River running through the valley, and surrounding forests.

Shattered wooden buildings were visible amid the rubble, underscoring the scale of destruction.

“We’ve lost our village,” said Matthias Bellwald, the mayor of Blatten at a press conference. “The village is under rubble. We will rebuild.” Despite the devastation, Bellwald emphasised the community’s resilience, vowing to support residents in the recovery process.Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter expressed solidarity with Blatten’s residents, stating on X, “It’s terrible to lose your home.”

Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for local authorities, added, “An unbelievable amount of material thundered down into the valley.” The collapse, which registered as a 3.1-magnitude earthquake, involved millions of cubic meters of rock, ice, and soil, exacerbated by earlier rockfalls that had destabilized the glacier.University of Zurich, explained that warming temperatures have weakened permafrost, destabilizing mountain rock and likely contributing to the disaster. He noted that the scale of destruction in Blatten is unprecedented in the Swiss Alps in recent history. Switzerland, home to Europe’s largest number of glaciers, lost 4% of its glacier volume in 2023 alone, following a 6% decline in 2022.