Falling debris forces suspension of search for missing man after landslide buries Swiss village

Published on 29/05/2025 - 20:32 GMT+2

The hunt for a missing 64-year-old antheral has been suspended due to the fact that of unsafe conditions aft a immense wide of stone and crystal from a glacier crashed down a mountainside successful Switzerland, burying the colony of Glatten.

The landslide sent plumes of particulate skyward and coated with astir each of the Alpine colony with mud that authorities had evacuated earlier this period arsenic a precaution.

State Councillor Stéphane Ganzer told Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) that 90% of the colony was destroyed.

The Cantonal Police of Valais said that a hunt and rescue cognition was temporarily suspended aboriginal connected Thursday day due to the fact that of falling debris.

The determination authorities said successful a connection that a ample chunk of the Birch Glacier supra the colony had breached off, causing the landslide, which besides buried the adjacent Lonza River bed, raising the anticipation of dammed h2o flows.

Video connected societal media and Swiss tv showed that the mudslide adjacent Blatten, successful the confederate Lötschental valley, partially submerged homes and different buildings nether a wide of brownish sludge.

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is expected to sojourn the country connected Friday.

In caller days, authorities had ordered the evacuation of around 300 people, arsenic good arsenic each livestock, from the colony amid fears that the 1.5 million-cubic metre glacier was astatine hazard of collapse.

Swiss glaciologists person repeatedly expressed concerns astir a thaw successful caller years, attributed successful ample portion to planetary warming, that has accelerated the retreat of glaciers successful Switzerland.

The landlocked Alpine state has the astir glaciers of immoderate state successful Europe and saw 4% of its total glacier measurement vanish successful 2023.

That was the second-biggest diminution successful a azygous twelvemonth aft a 6% driblet successful 2022.