Evacuated resident Daniel Ritler describes the moment the glacier destroyed his hometown as being like ‘an explosion’Image: Rosie Birchard\/DW<\/p>\n
“It was like an explosion \u2014\u00a0like an explosion in my heart,”\u00a0evacuee Daniel Ritler told DW as he looked out over his buried hometown. “We knew immediately that everything was destroyed.”<\/p>\n
“For seconds, there was an emptiness. You could really feel it,”\u00a0he added. “There was still a bit of hope, but as soon as the fog cleared, we saw the catastrophe.”<\/p>\n
Evacuated in time<\/p>\n
Ritler, who kept sheep and ran a tourism business in Blatten, is staying with friends for now. “We lost our house, our stables, and of course, all those memories. We lived in a little paradise,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n
Though the deluge is thought to have claimed one life<\/a>, Ritler and the other roughly 300 residents were evacuated in time. And many here feel lucky to be alive \u2014\u00a0aware that a similar event in a less wealthy country could have wrought even more damage.<\/p>\n We meet him in Wiler, 3.5 kilometers (2.1 miles) from Blatten and the closest accessible point to the disaster zone, which is now serving as a crisis coordination hub. Here, the usual Alpine soundtrack of birdsong and the river rushing down the valley is drowned out by helicopters taking off, transporting scientists and geologists to survey the damage aerially, and assess the risk of further fallout.<\/p>\n Mountain populations ‘more and more threatened’<\/p>\n One of those experts is glaciologist Saskia Gindraux. “We had a lot of rock and silt and sediment going onto a glacier<\/a>, and this mass caused the glacier to really push forward \u2014\u00a0and everything just went down the valley,”\u00a0she explained.<\/p>\n The Swiss scientist told DW that a “coincidence of causes”\u00a0led to the collapse. “It’s hard to say this is linked to climate change and this one is not. It’s hard to put a label on an event, but we are facing really high temperatures here in the Alps,”\u00a0she told DW. “It’s twice the normal increase of other parts of the world,”\u00a0she added.<\/p>\n Alpine glaciers have been retreating for decades<\/a>, which Gindraux said\u00a0makes the rock less stable. “That’s one cause … The other one is maybe permafrost that is melting<\/a>, and the other one, the geology.”<\/p>\n “With climate change, we saw that the oldest natural hazards, so rock fall or glacier collapse or landslides, etc, they increase in frequency.”<\/p>\n “The population in the mountains are more and more threatened with these types of events.”<\/p>\n Fears neighbors ‘won’t come back’<\/p>\n Aside from the hum of helicopters, the streets of Wiler are quiet. Local resident Alex Rieder is packing up his car: Two black bin bags full of clothes and other basics for his neighbors who have found themselves suddenly homeless.<\/p>\n “Will they be compensated for the belongings they lost?”\u00a0he wondered. “That has to happen quickly. Now \u00a0because people need money to live. Because if they’re gone for 10 or 20 years, they won’t come back,”\u00a0Rieder told DW.<\/p>\n Rieder fears for the future of life in this part of the Alps. “There’s only one school left in the entire valley,”\u00a0he said. Inside his garage, Rieder shows us masks he helped craft for the local carnival \u2014 just one of many traditions dating back centuries here. He knows that if more people leave, this cultural heritage will become harder and harder to hold onto.<\/p>\n But asked if he thinks it will disappear entirely, Rieder is defiant.<\/p>\n “Traditions will never die. That will be the last thing. Because that’s what gives people the most strength.”<\/p>\n No more evacuations planned<\/p>\n No further evacuations are planned in nearby towns or villages for now. But they remain on high alert. Some 45 minutes’ drive away in Gampel, flood prevention measures are in place, with some smaller bridges deliberately deconstructed to avoid further fallout.<\/p>\n “We now have to see how the dangers develop further at the site of the damage. Rock masses could continue to fall from the mountain \u2014\u00a0and we have to keep monitoring how the danger develops in terms of the course of the river,”\u00a0regional president Christian Rieder told DW on Sunday.<\/p>\n Locals face uncertainty after Swiss Alps glacier collapse Injured cow ‘Loni’ was evacuated along with most residents of the Alpine village days before the landslideImage: Peter Klaunzer\/KEYSTONE\/dpa\/picture alliance<\/p>\n
The unstable mountain face and thousands of tonnes of rocky debris has made it impossible for emergency workers to intervene to stabilize the zone Image: Cyril Zingaro\/KEYSTONE\/dpa<\/p>\n
Former Blatten resident Alex Rieder is fearful of what the future of the valley will look likeImage: Rosie Birchard\/DW<\/p>\n