The Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed, leaving several homes fully flattened after a huge section of a glacier fell down onto the valley floor.
Thankfully, the village had been evacuated earlier because of fears that the Birch glacier was falling apart – fears that proved to be correct.
While most people in the village were evacuated safely, one person has been reported missing and many homes have been destroyed.
Despite this, Blatten's mayor, Matthias Bellwald, maintains that the village still has a future, even though "the unimaginable has happened".
"We have lost our village, but not our heart,” he said. “We will support each other and console each other. After a long night, it will be morning again."
Here’s a closer look at what happened, and why.
What happened?
The 300 village residents were told to leave their homes on May 19, after geologists in the area issued warnings that the glacier could be about to collapse.
Drone footage then showed that a large part of the Birch glacier collapsed at around 3:30pm local time (2:30pm BST) on Wednesday, May 28.
This caused an avalanche of mud that swept down into the valley and across the village of Blatten.
Those who witnessed it reported a huge roar as the glacier crashed down into the valley, wiping out houses and leaving a huge cloud of dust.
What’s next?
Local authorities are now receiving support from the Swiss army’s disaster relief unit.
Members of the Swiss government are also heading to the scene, having already promised funding to residents to make sure that they can stay in the area, even if not directly in the same village. It’s unclear at the moment whether this will be possible eventually.
Such events are a rare but not unheard of occurrence for Alpine communities, despite efforts to resist the effects.
Residents of the eastern Swiss village of Brienz being evacuated two years ago because of a similar issue of the mountainside above falling to pieces. In that case, the Brienz residents have only been allowed to return for shorts periods.
Another example dates back to 2017, when eight hikers were killed and many homes were destroyed by the biggest landslide in over a century, close to the village of Bondo.
Raphaël Mayoraz, head of the regional office for Natural Hazards, told the BBC that further evacuations in the areas close to Blatten could be necessary down the line.
Is climate change responsible?
It’s thought that climate change is to blame for the glacial collapse, as warmer temperatures cause the glaciers to melt more quickly than usual.
This also causes the permafrost – ground that remains frozen for two or more years and holds the high Alpine glaciers together – to thaw, which affects the integrity of the glaciers.
Glaciologists have been warning for years that mountain towns and villages are at risk from disasters like this, as proven by the earlier incidents noted above.
“In a warming world, ice melts faster and that’s what happened here,” Professor Jonathan Bamber from the University of Bristol’s School of Geographical Sciences, told the Evening Standard. “Ice and snow avalanches and rockfalls are phenomena that occur ‘naturally’ in mountain environments, but surface warming accelerates this process as the permafrost (permanently frozen ground) and glaciers start to thaw and melt.
“We have seen an increasing number of glacially related landslides and avalanches across the Alps, some of which have resulted in significant infrastructure damage and loss of life.”
The most recent reports from the NASA Earth Observatory show that Swiss glaciers lost 2.5 per cent of their volume in 2024 alone.
