A huge disaster that engulfed a village in southeastern Switzerland left a man missing on Thursday. On Wednesday, the southern Wallis place of Switzerland experienced a flood of stone and ice that sent plumes of dust skyward as a result of the Birch glacier’s folded. Nearly the entire town of an Alpine was covered in mud by the flood. Government evacuated the town last week as a precaution. Blatten, a town of 300 individuals, was mostly destroyed by the storm. According to State Councilor Stephane Ganzer, 90 % of the town was destroyed, according to Radio Television Suisse. A helicopter with a thermal lens was used in a search and rescue operation for the missing 64-year-old man, according to the Cantonal Police of Valais. Ice prone to weather changeSwitzerland’s glacier have experienced severe impacts from climate change. They melted just as much as they did between 1960 and 1990 in the decades 2022 and 2023. The possible impact of climate change, according to Mattias Huss, head of the Swiss agency Glacier Monitoring, was the loss of the rock mass that led to the glacier’s collapse and later landslide. He told Reuters,” Unexpected things happen at locations that we haven’t seen for hundreds of years, most perhaps as a result of climate change.” Concerns rising over a blocked riverAuthorities are putting a state of emergency in response to the large, 2 km ( 1.25 miles ) thick pile of glacier debris blocking the Lonza River. A member of the military’s safety force, Antoine Jacquod, reported to the Keystone-ATS news agency that” there is a serious danger of an ice jelly that was flood the valley below.” Authorities said that an assessment had been made during the late mid-day from the nearby town of Ferden because the area was too fragile to be approached. 16 people were ejected late on Wednesday from two villages inland from the crisis area as a protection. The water being pushed back by the snow, earth, and dust wall has emptied an artificial reservoir. Authorities would have to consider evacuating the river if the dam’s water were to flow. According to municipal officials,” the loan is not very steady, and dirt flow is feasible within the deposit itself,” making any treatment in the disaster area for the time being out. On both sides of the river, they added that risk exists. People of Blatten shocked by the size of destructionMartin Henzen, a native of Blatten, told Reuters that he was still trying to process the events and did not want to represent the town. Henzen said that while the majority of people are calm,” they are naturally affected,” they are also making preparations for a natural disaster of some kind, but they are not, citing the magnitude of the damage. The dust damming up the river may cause up to 1 million square meters ( 35 million cubic feet ) of water to eke out everyday, and the unbroken houses that were a result of the disaster are now flooding. Regulators have been removing cattle from the place. One doesn’t think about it yet because the impact is therefore deep, according to Jonas Jeitziner, an official in the nearby town of Wiler.
