Failure of the Birch Glacier buries Swiss village – official denial continues

The Village of Blatten in the canton of Valais was hit by a massive rock and ice fall yesterday (28 May). Blatten’s 300 inhabitants had been evacuated following observations that the Birch glacier was unstable, but one person is missing and 90% of the village is buried under an estimated 3 million cubic metres of debris which is also blocking the Lonza River, turning it into a lake that threatens the remaining buildings and downriver communities, two of which have been evacuated.

Tremors from the collapse measuring 3.1 on the Richter scale were felt across Switzerland in what experts at the federal institute for technology ETH Zurich have described as one of the largest mass movements ever recorded.

Blatten’s Mayor said “the unimaginable has happened”. 

Except such events aren’t that unimaginable. 

A similar rockfall occurred in 2017 in the canton of Grisons, killing 8 hikers and destroying the village of Bondo, home to 65 people. The tragedy was the biggest landslide in over a century. In 2023, Brienz, also in the Grisons, was evacuated ahead of a huge landslide that stopped just short of the village. The inhabitants were evacuated again last year because of a further threat. 

Our Minister for the Environment headed for the disaster scene where he professed sympathy with the inhabitants and told them, with a straight face, that he had not expected such an event.

It was, he assured the assembled onlookers and press, a “1 in a 1,000 year event.”

He may have to revise his figures. Switzerland has more glaciers than any other European country and is warming at twice the global average. In 2023, Swiss glaciers lost 4% of their total volume, following a loss of 6% the previous year. And the permafrost is melting too which is problematic because it acts like a glue holding the mountains together.

While multiple factors are involved in triggering such events, the country’s scientists have warned that climate change has very likely played a role.

But officials have a habit of downplaying climate change and coverage in the press is tepid, unlike Switzerland’s warming mountains.

In 2024, Switzerland became the world’s first country to be reprimanded by the powerful European Court of Human Rights for failing “to comply with its duties under the Convention concerning climate change” and for violating the right to respect for private and family life. The case was brought by a group of older Swiss women known as the Climate Grannies, who couldn’t get their complaint heard in Switzerland. The Swiss Government shrugged off the ruling and the Climate Grannies were denigrated in parliament. 

While local authorities acted quickly and decisively ahead of this week’s tragedy and their actions saved many lives, more landslides can be expected. And in the very near future too.

Whatever our Minister may say.

Addendum: the SRF drone footage shows a white sheep scattering as the debris cloud envelops it. Livestock were apparently evacuated from the area, but one wonders how many others were injured or killed. 

The Valais delights in blaming wolves for livestock depredation and is exterminating entire packs for killing just one sheep. Yet wolves are responsible for just 2% of total sheep deaths in Switzerland, with extreme weather events, disease, accidents and neglect killing the rest. 

If this sheep met its demise at the fangs of wolves, the story would be all over the papers. 

It is all too easy for inconvenient truths to be overshadowed by official denial and investigative apathy.