Glacier collapse devastates Swiss village, homes buried in mud

A massive portion of a glacier in the Swiss Alps on Thursday, May 29, 2025, has broken off, unleashing a powerful landslide composed of ice, mud, and rock that has buried the majority of the village of Blatten.

Fortunately, residents had been evacuated earlier in the month due to warnings of a potential rockslide.

Online media reports say the disaster followed ongoing concerns over the stability of the Birch Glacier.

The Birch Glacier is located above the village in the Lötschental valley in the southern canton of Valais.

Drone footage aired by Swiss national broadcaster SRF revealed the extensive destruction:

a wide, muddy plain now blankets much of Blatten, including parts of the river running through the village and the forested slopes of the surrounding valley.

The images also show debris from buildings swept away in the disaster, now scattered across the enormous mass of displaced earth.

“This is a major catastrophe,” said Stephane Ganzer, head of security for the Valais region, in an interview with the local TV station Canal9.

“Approximately 90% of the village is either destroyed or buried.”

According to a statement from the regional government, a large segment of the Birch Glacier gave way, triggering the landslide.

In addition to devastating the village, the slide has also buried the nearby Lonza riverbed.

This prompted concerns that water flow could be obstructed, potentially creating dangerous conditions downstream.

Ganzer cautioned that the disaster may not yet be over.

“There’s a risk that the situation could get worse,” he warned, indicating that further monitoring of the site is essential.

Blatten’s mayor, Matthias Bellwald, expressed the gravity of the loss during a press conference held after the slide.

“We’ve lost our village,” he said.

“The village is under rubble. We will rebuild,” he added.

One person has been reported missing in the aftermath of the landslide.

Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for local authorities in Valais, described the incident as overwhelming.

“An unbelievable amount of material thundered down into the valley,” he said.

The sheer scale of the destruction, including damage to buildings and infrastructure, has left the small Alpine community reeling.

Blatten, which has around 300 residents, was evacuated on May 19 after geologists identified an imminent danger of falling rock and ice from the glacier above.

The early evacuation likely prevented further tragedy, though the physical destruction is extensive.

SRF confirmed that several houses were destroyed in the slide.

The village, nestled in a picturesque valley, was especially vulnerable due to its location beneath steep, unstable slopes.

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter responded to the disaster by expressing her solidarity with the people of Blatten.

In a message posted on X (formerly Twitter), she wrote, “It’s terrible to lose your home,” acknowledging the emotional and personal toll of the event.

Emergency services have since closed off the main access road to the valley and have warned the public to stay away from the area due to ongoing hazards.

The region remains unstable, and authorities continue to monitor the situation closely.

Footage circulating on social media captured the dramatic moment the glacier partially collapsed.

A massive cloud of dust and debris enveloped the mountainside as the ice and rock crashed into the valley below, reaching the outskirts of Blatten.

The video underscored the suddenness and violence of the event, which turned a known risk into a devastating reality within moments.

The collapse of the Birch Glacier is a stark reminder of the growing environmental instability in alpine regions.

While natural processes like glacier calving and rockslides are not new, the increasing frequency and scale of such events have been linked by experts to climate change.

This is supposedly accelerating glacier melt and destabilizing mountain slopes.

For now, Blatten’s residents face a long road to recovery.

Though the village lies buried, the community, led by local authorities and supported by national leaders, is determined to rebuild from the ruins of this disaster.

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