Geneva — A 64-year-old antheral remained missing Thursday aft a immense wide of stone and crystal from a glacier crashed down a Swiss mountainside the time before.
The landslide sent plumes of particulate skyward and coated with mud astir each of an Alpine colony that authorities had evacuated earlier this period arsenic a precaution. State Councilor Stéphane Ganzer told Radio Télévision Suisse that 90% of the colony was destroyed.
"An unbelievable magnitude of worldly thundered down into the valley," the Reuters quality bureau quotes Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for section authorities arsenic saying.
Mud and rocks descent down a upland aft a glacier partially collapsed, covering astir of the colony of Blatten, Switzerland connected May 28, 2025, successful this surface drawback taken from a handout video.
Pomona Media / Handout via Reuters
"We've mislaid our village," Blatten Mayor Matthias Bellwald told a property conference, according to Reuters. "The colony is nether rubble. We volition rebuild."
Mud and rocks screen a colony aft a glacier illness onto Blatten, Switzerland, connected May 28, 2025, successful this surface drawback taken from a video.
KEYSTONE-SDA via REUTERS
The Cantonal Police of Valais said that a hunt and rescue cognition was underway for the missing man, whose sanction wasn't made public, and that it progressive a drone with a thermal camera.
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.
In caller days, authorities had ordered the evacuation of astir 300 people, arsenic good arsenic each livestock, from the colony amid fears that the 52 million-cubic ft glacier was astatine hazard of collapse.
Swiss glaciologists person repeatedly expressed concerns astir a thaw successful caller years - attributed successful ample portion to global 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 full glacier measurement vanish successful 2023. That was the second-biggest diminution successful a azygous twelvemonth aft a 6% driblet successful 2022.
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