GR: from Monday Brienz will be habitable again
Keystone-SDA
Residents will be able to return to the Swiss mountain village of Brienz/Brinzauls on Monday as the landslide threat subsides.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The current ban on access and evacuation will be lifted after 62 weeks, the municipality of Albula/Alvra has announced.
+ Why do Swiss mountains collapse? It’s complicated
The lifting of the access ban, which has been in force since November 17, 2024, is possible thanks to “the significant reduction in the landslide movements observed on the slope above the village in recent weeks”.
The risk from the unstable zone has been reduced to such an extent that it is once again possible to stay safely in the inhabited area.
+ One in six Swiss homes exposed to natural hazards
Inhabitants to return
Until Monday, Brienz/Brinzauls will be subject to a transitional ‘orange phase’ that allows evacuated residents and owners of second homes to gradually return to their homes and stay overnight.
From Monday at 6am, the ‘green phase’ will begin when inhabitants can fully return to live in their homes after more than a year, and the village will also be open to non-residents.
The surrounding agricultural areas will also be accessible again. The danger zone above the village will, however, remain forbidden, as the risk of rockfalls and landslides persists.
Single road access
Access to Brienz/Brinzauls will only be possible from the Brienzerstrasse via Surava/Alvaneu. The road between Brienz and Vazerol will remain closed to through traffic because it is too narrow.
Postbus route 183 between Lenzerheide and Davos will also once again run regularly through the village.
Join the debate:
Plateau Ost safer
The hamlet of Brienz/Brinzauls was evacuated again in November 2024. In 2023, a huge debris flow had stopped just short of the village. The volume of fallen rock amounted to 1.7 million cubic metres.
In October and November 2025, several small collapses had occurred that had made geologists fear the worst.
But the risk of rock detachment from the area known as Plateau Ost, which overlooks the village, abated, indicating that the landslide had largely stopped.
More
More
Swiss households to move as Brienz landslide threat rises
Translated from Italian by AI/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
