A Swiss village came within a hair’s breadth of being wiped off the map when a mountain towering above it collapsed overnight, officials said yesterday.
The massive rockslide missed Brienz in the east of the country, “by a hair”, they said.
The village that was evacuated last month due to the risk it could be buried under a collapsing mountainside, with local authorities saying yesterday that they were on alert for another one.
Video footage from Swiss broadcaster Blick showed rocks tumbling down on Thursday evening from a mountain near the village of Brienz in the eastern canton of Graubuenden and then piling up over most of the mountainside yesterday morning.
Swiss authorities ordered 84 residents to abandon the village on May 12 over fears that it could be buried under the rocks.
Since then, only some farmers were allowed to temporarily come back to work on nearby fields.
At the time, authorities from the Albula municipality that includes Brienz estimated up to 2mn cu metres of rock could break off the nearby mountain.
They said in a Tweet yesterday that “a very large part” of that mountain has already broken off.
Early yesterday the local authorities inspected the damage, and let out a sigh of relief.
“There is no indication of damage in the village, with the rock mass having stopped just in front of the village,” they said in a statement.
A metre-high wall of mud and rock came to a halt just in front of the village school.
Climate change is putting Switzerland at increased risk of natural hazards, including an increase in erosion due to higher temperatures, Swiss authorities say.
This picture taken on Friday shows a view of Brienz, far-eastern Switzerland after a massive landslide that spared the village.
