Due to the possibility of flooding in the Alpine valley, warnings have been issued that additional evacuations may be required due to water trapped behind a mass of glacial debris that this week buried a settlement and stopped a river in southern Switzerland.
On Wednesday, a mountain collapsed, drowning the community of Blatten with millions of cubic meters of ice, mud, and rock. The few buildings that were left eventually flooded. Earlier in May, when a portion of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier started to collapse, its 300 inhabitants were evacuated.
Flooding got worse on Thursday because the rubble pile, which was about two kilometers (1.2 miles) across, blocked the River Lonza’s course and created a lake in the middle of the devastation.
