Almost 
The Swiss town of Blatten has been wiped out after a glacier collapsed down a mountainside.
The disaster happened on Wednesday, May 28, when about three million cubic meters of rock and ice crashed down into the Lötschental valley in the canton of Valais, burying 130 buildings — about 90% of Blatten.
Authorities had been closely monitoring the Birch Glacier after a large landslide in 1993, and on May 14, scientists began observing signs of instability, followed by a debris flow that stopped about 500 meters above the valley.
On May 17, authorities evacuated 92 people due to movement on the mountainside and eventually evacuated all 300 residents of the town in two hours on May 19.
Livestock was also evacuated, including Loni, a limping cow that was airlifted out, according to local media.
As the glacier began moving faster, two other villages further down the valley were also evacuated, with a total of 365 people evacuated.
On May 28, the glacier collapsed, unleashing a massive ice and debris avalanche that buried most of Blatten.
No deaths were reported, but police said a 64-year-old man was missing, according to AP.
Authorities have said they have not yet been able to start cleaning up as the glacier is still unstable.
“Blatten has been wiped away. Erased, obliterated, destroyed, stamped into the ground,” the village’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, said on Friday, June 1. “The memories preserved in countless books, photo albums, documentation – everything is gone. In short, this is ground zero for Blatten.”
“What happened is the unthinkable, the catastrophic worst-case scenario,” Christophe Lambiel, a specialist in high-mountain geology and glaciers at the University of Lausanne, told RTS Swiss Television, NPR reported.
Lambiel said the rock face above the glacier had been breaking off and adding weight and pressure, which led to the glacier’s movement over the past decade, adding that the rockfalls were due to climate change.
“The increase in the falling rocks is due to the melting permafrost, which increases instability,” he said, adding that the permafrost has warmed by at least 1˚C Celsius in the past 10 to 15 years. (📹: Reuters, 📝: @kassy)
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