The Swiss authorities have ordered the evacuation of the inhabitants of Brienz, a small town in the canton of Grisons.
According to geologists a mass of two million cubic meters of rock it could break away at any moment and bury the village.
The mountain, experts say, has been moving steadily since the last ice age but recent measurements have indicated a “strong acceleration”.
“The rockfall has become much more intense in recent weeks” e the weather conditions they further favor the sliding of part of the mountain.
Large boulders fell on the meadow above the village while a menacing noise came from the mountain.
The ancient village is located straddling the German-speaking and Romansh-speaking areas of the eastern Grisons region, southwest of Davos, at an altitude of around 1,150 meters and today counts less than 100 inhabitants.
Over the last century, Brienz itself has moved a few inches every year, but the movement has accelerated over the past 20 years.
Among the various scenarios, the possibility of a sudden and large landslide with catastrophic consequences it is the least probable, but cannot be ruled out.
Christian Gartmann, who sits on the crisis management committee of the city of Albula, of which Brienz is a fraction, said there is 60% chance that the rock will crumble in such a way that the consequences for the country would be contained.
The landslide, which she moved about a meter a year, could also move slowly. But there’s also a 10% chance that the entire mass of two million cubic meters can detach causing a disaster.
According to Gartmann, the melting of glaciers has influenced the precariousness of the rocks over the millennia, but that due to climate change “caused by man” in recent decades is not a determining factor.
After discarding the hypotheses of a controlled explosion of the wall – too dangerous as it would have required drilling into the rock – or building one huge containment barrier – the “wall” should have been at least 70 meters high to protect the village – the authorities decided for the evacuation of the inhabitants by Friday.
“I wanted to come once again to say hello to my parents’ house. We don’t know if our little village of Brienz will still exist in 14 days”Anna Bergamin, a woman who grew up in this mountain village but now lives on the valley floor, said in a Keystone-ATS interview.
