Swiss village evacuated over threat of rockslide

View of the village Brienz and the "Brienzer Rutsch," taken in Brienz-Brinzauls, Switzerland, May 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Arnd Wiegmann, File)

GENEVA — Swiss authorities cleared a village in the country’s east over a potential rockslide, three weeks after a mudslide submerged a vacated village in the southwest.

Residents of Brienz/Brinzauls, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) southwest of Davos, were being barred from entering the village because a rock mass on a plateau overhead has “accelerated so rapidly that it threatens to collapse,” a statement from local officials said Monday.

Farm work in the area was also being halted, and livestock owners moved their animals out of nearby pastures due to early warning signs on Sunday.

Authorities said the region is closely monitored by early-warning systems in the town, which is no stranger to such evacuations: Villagers had been ordered out of Brienz/Brinzauls in November and in June two years ago — before a huge mass of rock tumbled down the mountain, narrowly missing the village.

The mountain and the rocks on it have been moving since the last Ice Age. While glacier melt has affected the precariousness of the rocks over millennia, local authorities say melting glaciers due to “man-made” climate change in recent decades hasn’t been a factor.

The centuries-old village straddles German- and Romansch-speaking parts of the eastern Graubünden region and sits at an altitude of about 1,150 metres (about 3,800 feet). Today, it has under 100 residents.

A leading Swiss insurers’ association issued Tuesday a preliminary estimate of damages related to the submerging of the southwestern village of Blatten on May 28, putting the figure at some 320 million Swiss francs (about US$393 million) — more than 80 per cent of which was attributed to damages to buildings and movable property.

The rest — about 60 million francs (about $73.8 million) — involved damage to businesses and motor vehicles.

The Associated Press