Huge Swiss rockfall near villagers’ homes led to urgent evacuation of residents

A Swiss village has narrowly escaped being engulfed by a huge mass of rock after it stopped just short of the settlement having slid down the mountainside, relieved local officials have said. Roughly 1.9 million cubic metres (67 million cubic feet) of rock had been deemed at risk of breaking away, and potentially of destroying the village of Brienz, in the southeastern Graubuenden region of Switzerland. In recent days, local officials said rock movements on the slope were accelerating.

Much of the rock mass tumbled toward Brienz between 11 pm and midnight on Thursday night, the local council said. 

It said that there was no damage to the village and the rockslide stopped just short of it, leaving a “metres-high deposit” in front of the school building.

About two-thirds of the rock — at an initial estimate, somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million cubic metres (42.4 and 53 million cubic feet) — appears to have come down the slope on Thursday night, geologist Stefan Schneider said at a news conference.

“This is very good news, because the danger … to the village has become much smaller,” he added.

“We can say that today is one of the best days since the evacuation,” said Daniel Albertin, the head of the local council. 

“The wait for the mountain was long. But now the mountain has come down as we envisioned, and … a great deal has come down, but nothing is damaged in the village and no inhabitants were harmed.”

However, officials couldn’t yet say when they might be able to end the evacuation – all residents left the village on May 12 – although they said the chances of a permanent return are very high.

“The people of Brienz will still have to be a bit patient before they can move back,” Mr Albertin said. 

“We have to carry out further evaluations before we can give them enough security to be able to move back to their village and continue living or working there.”

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Authorities stepped the alert level up another notch after the rockslide as a precaution. They couldn’t immediately assess in the darkness what was happening. 

They closed more local roads and a railway line, and evacuated three houses in a neighbouring village, but they reversed that on Friday lunchtime.

The rockslide came a bit over a week after residents of Brienz were allowed to make their first visits back to the village since the evacuation to retrieve essential items from their houses. Only two people per household were allowed in for 90-minute visits.

Officials said at the time of the evacuation that residents would be able to return from time to time, depending on the risk level, but not stay overnight. Located at an altitude of some 1,150 metres (about 3,800 feet), the village has under 100 residents.

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