Search Suspended for Missing Man After Landslide Buries Swiss Village

The Swiss village of Blatten has buried a glacial and mountain fall under rubble and ice. Forces have evacuated the place before, looking for a missing person.

Search Suspended for Missing Man in Swiss Glacier Collapse That Destroyed 90 Percent of an Alpine Village

GENEVA—The search for a missing 64-year-old man was suspended Thursday because of unsafe conditions after a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier crashed down a Swiss mountainside the day before. The landslide sent plumes of dust skyward and coated with mud nearly all of an Alpine village that authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution. State Councilor Stéphane Ganzer told Radio Télévision Suisse that 90 percent of the villa…

Gigantic rock and ice masses cause the level of leaves to rise unceasingly. Now the next natural disaster threatens. The search for a missing person had to be stopped for the time being.

Search suspended for missing man after landslide buries Swiss village

The regional government said that a large chunk of the Birch Glacier above Glatten had broken off, causing the landslide, which also buried the nearby Lonza River bed.

The danger in the Swiss Alps has not yet been banished after the glacial collapse.

The surroundings of the village of Blatten are like a lunar landscape, but now there is another danger. The rubble cone should not be able to hold the huge piled up water masses for long.