Still no break in the glacier above Blatten (VS)
Keystone-SDA
An unstable glacier above the Swiss village of Blatten has stopped breaking up, but there is still no question of lifting a landslide alert.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
As on previous nights, isolated rockfalls had occurred, said the spokesman for the Lötschental regional command headquarters on Friday morning, when interviewed by the Keystone-ATS news agency.
+ How to protect people and homes from Swiss landslides
“The feeling that the night was a little quieter is based more on what we heard than on what we saw,” he added. For several days now, there have been regular rock falls.
Reconnaissance flights are planned for Friday to give experts a clearer idea of the situation in the area of the rockfall. Estimates put the total mass of unstable rock at between four and six million cubic metres.
No danger to homes
Movements on the glacier have accelerated to one and a half metres a day. However, isolated boulders are not expected to pose a problem for roads or housing.
The village of Blatten was evacuated on Monday due to the risk of rockfall. Around 300 people had to leave their homes. There have been no injuries or damage to infrastructure as yet.
More
More
Landslide threat: authorities order evacuation of Swiss mountain village
Adapted from French by DeepL/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
