The Birch Glacier collapsed and caused a devastating landslide that buried almost all of Blatten, Switzerland. Thankfully, geologists knew the area was unstable in advance, and most people in the town evacuated before the collapse. However, one person is currently missing. The search for the missing person is currently suspended due to dangerous conditions in the valley, which is now filled with debris from the collapsed glacier.
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“At the bottom of the valley, a huge deposit of ice and rock, several dozen meters thick and approximately two kilometers long, has buried most of the village of Blatten,” states a press release from Canton du Valais. “The damage is considerable.”
Concerns remain about the area’s instability, as well as the damming of the Lonza River.
“The Lonza River has been blocked, and a lake is forming, flooding the remaining buildings,” the press release says. “The challenge lies in the behavior of this accumulation of water and the Lonza River, which could cause a debris flow if the river overflows the deposit. To this end, the storage capacity of the Ferden Dam, located below, has been increased. As a precaution, some buildings in the municipalities of Wiler and Kippel have been evacuated.”
Here are several videos showing the dramatic collapse of the Birch Glacier in Switzerland:
🔴 Toujours à #Blatten [CH] en #Suisse , de très grandes quantités d’eau s’accumulent derrière les millions de mètres cubes de “roche” ⚠️ Les villages en contrebas craignent un raz-de-marée imminent… (via ©Pomona) pic.twitter.com/HlEKVuf62k
— Météo Franc-Comtoise (@MeteoFrComtoise) May 28, 2025
Google Translate provided a translation of the Canton du Valais press release from French to English.
Header image by Johannes Löw (CC BY-SA 2.5)