A crumbling mountain threatens the Swiss village of Blatten. A third of the mountain top has already come down, the rest may follow.
Since last week Tuesday, 1.5 million cubic meters of rock have been dislodged. The rock began to slide on a large scale when it came together with ice from the Birchgletsjer. Since then, the mountain has been “constantly in motion,” writes the Swiss medium Der Bund, which keeps a live blog.
Experts expect that more stone will come down in the coming days. “It is certainly 2 million, and in the worst case 5 million cubic meters,” said Alban Brigger of the Department of Natural Disasters of the canton on Monday. “There is acute danger of a major landslide,” writes Der Bund.
So far, the debris falls down in relatively small quantities. That’s good news, Mayor Matthias Bellwald told Blick on Monday evening. “Because it means that the whole mass does not move at once.” In small quantities, the crumbling rock “poses no significant threat” to the village.
“The best scenario has come true,” says Brigger about Tuesday. The glacier now poses the greatest danger because it is shifting “at relatively high speed” and in an unpredictable way.