A person remains missing after a huge landslide on Thursday that surrounded a village in Southern Switzerland.
Birch glaciers uprooted on Wednesday in the southern Wallis region of Switzerland, with the results to plums of the sky of rock and snow landslide landslides.
It was coated near the entry of a alpine village with mud. Last week, officials vacated the village as a precaution.
The barrage destroyed Bleton’s Hemlet to a large extent, which was home for 300 people. State Councilor Stephen Puri told Radio Television Suisse that 90% of the villages were destroyed.
Valace’s cantonal police said a discovery and rescue operation was going on for a 64 -year -old man, including a drone with a thermal camera.
Unsecured glacier for climate change
Swiss glaciers are severely affected by climate change.
In the years of 2022 and 2023, they melted the same in decades from 1960 to 1990, which were lost in a total of 105 of their volume.
Mathius Hus, head of glacier monitoring at Switzerland (glamos), pointed to the possible impact of climate change in losing rock mass in the permafrost zone, which triggers the collapse and subsequent landslides of the glacier.
“Unexpected things occur in places we have not seen for hundreds of years, due to most climate change,” he told the Reuters.
A matter of concern on the blocked river
Officials declared the Emergency situation, as they monitored the position of the huge pile of the glacier’s debris, which extended for 2 kilometers (1.25 mi) blocking the Lonza River.
“There is a serious risk of snow jams that may flood the valley below,” military security officer Antony Jacquod told the Keystone-Aith news agency. “We are going to try to assess its dimensions.”
Due to the very unstable near the region, the authorities indicated that an evaluation would be done during the late afternoon from the nearby village Ferraden.
As a precaution, 16 people were evacuated from two villages below the disaster area late on Wednesday night.
An artificial dam was emptied to get water pushed back from the ice, earth and debris wall. Whether the water was to flow from the dam, the authorities would need to consider emptying the valley.
“The deposit … is not very stable, and the flow of debris within the deposits is possible (which) makes any interference in the disaster field impossible for time,” the cantonal authorities said. He said that there is a risk on both sides of the valley.
Surprised by the scale of destruction
Martin Hengen, a Blaton resident, told the Reuters that he was still trying to do the process what happened and did not want to talk for another in the village. “Most are calm,” Henzen said, “but they are clearly affected.”
Hengen said that the residents had prepared for any natural disaster, but “not for this scenario,” referring to the scale of destruction.
1 million cubic meters (35 million cubic feet) can accumulate daily in water, resulting in the debris to reach the banks of the river, and the buildings coming out of landslides are now flooding.
Authorities have excluded livestock from the area.
“Right now,” Jonas Jitzineer said to the official in the neighboring Willer, “The shock is so professional that no one can think well about it.”
Edited by: ZAC Crellin
