After Birch Glacier dramatically collapsed in the Swiss Alps, killing 90 % of Blatten, a 300-person hill town, went missing. A significant amount of ice splintered off from Birch Glacier in Switzerland’s southern Wallis region on Wednesday around 3: 30 pm ( local time ). A large torrent of snow, mud, and rock washed out by it, which caused the village to be buried in the Lotschental valley. Despite the officers ‘ previous announcement to leave the village the previous week because of the imminent risk of a disaster, some people continued to stay in their homes. A 64-year-old gentleman who was not evacuated was the one who was missing. A large area of mud and debris was captured in drone footage by the European national broadcaster SRF, which engulfed homes, the valley’s Lonza River, and nearby forests. The rubble’s fractured wooden structures were visible, highlighting the size of the destruction.
At a press conference, Blatten president Matthias Bellwald declared,” We’ve lost our village. The community is buried under dust. We’ll start over. Bellwald emphasized the endurance of the community and pledged to assist people in the treatment process despite the destruction. On X, Blatten’s people expressed their condolences to Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, who added,” An amazing amount of material thundered down into the valley. Thousands of cubic feet of rock, ice, and land were involved in the collapse, which was classified as a 3. 1-magnitude earthquake, which was made worse by earlier rockfalls that had destabilized the ice. The University of Zurich claimed that warming temperatures have destabilized rock rocks, causing the disaster, and weakened tundra. He noted that Blatten’s death rate is unmatched in recent years in the Swiss Alps. Switzerland, the country’s largest glacier producer, lost 4 % of its glacier volume in 2023 alone after a 6 % decline in 2022.
