A village in the Swiss Alps was buried by an enormous chunk of rock and ice that broke off of the Birch Glacier on Wednesday.
Mud and plumes of dust covered roughly 90 percent of the alpine village of Blatten, which had been evacuated on May 19 as a precaution.
“We have lost our village,” said Mayor of Blatten Matthias Bellwald during a news conference Wednesday evening, as The Washington Post reported.
Bellwald described the destruction as extensive and appealed for help with rebuilding.
before and after today’s glacier collapse that buried 90% of blatten, switzerland
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer.com) May 28, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Authorities suspect the collapse was triggered by high-altitude snowmelt, though the exact cause remains unclear.
Geologists had warned the 300 inhabitants of the village nestled in the Swiss Alps that a glacier hanging high above was at risk of giving way.
The glacier finally broke up on Wednesday afternoon, pushed by overlying rocks, and buried the village under more than 100 million cubic feet of rock, ice and mud.
“The rock slope above the glacier started to crack apart and fall down,” Mylène Jacquemart, a glaciologist with the Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, told The Washington Post in a phone interview on Thursday.
Jacquemart explained that, over the course of two weeks, rocks had fallen on the glacier, eventually causing it to give way.
Officials said debris from the glacier stretched over a mile, causing a landslide that buried the Lonza River that flows through Blatten and releasing flood waters that inundated the few structures that survived.
“What I can tell you at the moment is that about 90% of the village is covered or destroyed, so it’s a major catastrophe that has happened here in Blatten,” Stephane Ganzer, head of security for the southern Valais region, told a local TV channel, as reported by The Associated Press.
“There’s a risk that the situation could get worse,” Ganzer added, referring to the blocked river.
There have been no confirmed casualties, but one person remains missing.
Local authorities requested support from the disaster relief unit of the Swiss Army, and government members were on their way to Blatten.
Bellwald said “the unimaginable has happened,” but that there was still a future for the village, the BBC reported.
Raphaël Mayoraz, head of the regional Natural Hazards office, warned that further evacuations close to Blatten could still be necessary.
Global heating is causing glaciers to melt increasingly quickly, with thawing permafrost — often described as what holds the mountains together — contributing to their instability.
For years, geologists monitoring the thawing of Birch Glacier warned that some of the alpine villages and towns could be at risk. Two years ago, residents of Brienz were evacuated as the mountainside above their village crumbled.
A recent report on the condition of glaciers in Switzerland suggested they could disappear within a century if temperatures are not kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average — a target which many climate scientists say has already been missed.
“We have lost our village, but not our heart. We will support each other and console each other. After a long night, it will be morning again,” Bellwald said.
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