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Around 30 people were evacuated from their homes in the upper Val de Bagnes in canton Valais in Switzerland after heavy rainfall unleashed a major mudslide.
Residents of the village of Les Epenays will be “housed elsewhere for an indefinite period. It depends on nature, it makes the laws,” Antoine Schaller, deputy secretary general of the municipality of Val de Bagnes, told local news.
The area saw heavy storms last week, after which mud, wood and large stones tore away the temporary emergency bridge in the upper Val de Bagnes, but residents said buildings were spared.
“The concern is the volumes coming down. And then there’s the detachment zone in the mountain, where an entire section is moving at a rate of about two meters per day,” said Pierre-Martin Moulin, General Secretary of Val de Bagnes.
It comes just over a week after a landslide cause by a glacier collapse buried most of the Swiss village of Blatten, renewing attention on the increasing dangers of global warming.
On 29 May, a large chunk of the Birch Glacier above the village had broken off, causing the landslide which also buried the nearby Lonza River bed, raising the possibility of dammed water flows.
Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concerns about a thaw in recent years, attributed in large part to global warming, that has accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.
The landlocked Alpine country has the most glaciers of any country in Europe, and saw 4% of its total glacier volume disappear in 2023. That was the second-biggest decline in a single year after a 6% drop in 2022.
In 2023, residents of the village of Brienz, in eastern Switzerland, were evacuated before a huge mass of rock slid down a mountainside, stopping just short of the community. Brienz was evacuated again last year because of the threat of a further rockslide.
