(Geneva) With heavy hearts, the inhabitants of Brienz began to evacuate this small village in the south-east of the Swiss Alps on Wednesday, threatened by the imminent collapse of a whole section of the mountain which overlooks it.
The 85 inhabitants of the tiny unpretentious town, only about thirty kilometers from Davos and fifty from Saint Mortiz, must leave their homes by Friday evening.
The authorities have decided to speed things up this week by noting that millions of tons of rocks which threaten the small town were moving faster than what the specialists responsible for monitoring had estimated until then.
“I wanted to go up one last time and say goodbye to my parents’ house. We don’t know if our Brienz will still exist in two weeks,” a woman who grew up in the mountain village told the Keystone-ATS agency on the spot.
With tears in her eyes, she explained that these farewells were difficult for her, after having long believed that this general evacuation would not be necessary.
Above the village countless chunks of rock the size of garden sheds are scattered over a meadow and stones and small boulders roll down the mountain at regular intervals.
This phenomenon has clearly intensified in recent weeks, reports to ATS Christian Gartmann, in charge of communication for the municipality of Albula in the canton of Graubünden, to which the village whose existence is mentioned for the first time belongs. in the middle of the ninth century.
The current weather is further accelerating the phenomenon and the inhabitants of the village will probably not be able to return to their homes for several weeks or even several months, according to the authorities.
In total, two million cubic meters of rock threaten to collapse in the coming weeks, but the extent of the damage remains difficult to predict.
The most probable hypothesis for the authorities and the least threatening for Brienz: repeated landslides of a few thousand to several hundred thousand cubic meters of rock.
The least likely hypothesis: a massive, rapid and wide-ranging landslide of more than 500,000 cubic meters of rock, with devastating consequences.
Four monitoring systems continuously deliver data and should allow the alert to be given in time.
If the disaster occurs sooner than expected, a siren will encourage residents to flee within minutes, explains Stefan Schneider, geologist and head of the early warning service, to the media.
The degree of danger is currently symbolized by the color orange. Three to ten days before an expected landslide, the staff of the municipality will turn it red.
Just before a landslide, the authorities will switch to the blue phase which will lead to the closure of several roads and the railway line.