Environment
Landslide in the Tyrolean Alps – summit broken off
View of one side of the Flughorn after rock masses have loosened and slid downhill. photo
© Zeitungsfoto.At/Riccardo Mizio/APA/dpa
And suddenly the summit cross is gone. During a landslide in the Tyrolean Alps, the summit of the Flüchthorn broke off. There is no evidence that people were harmed.
In a massive landslide in the Austrian state of Tyrol, an Alpine peak and summit cross disappeared. “Hundred meters from the summit have broken away,” estimated the head of the local mountain rescue service in Galtür, Christian Walter, on Monday in an interview with the German Press Agency. The day before, huge masses of rock had come loose on the Flühhorn massif and thundered downhill.
A group of mountain rescuers completed a training course in this area on Sunday, and those involved witnessed the natural phenomenon. A few minutes after the rockfall, a torrent formed and rushed past a mountain hut, an eyewitness reported to the “Kronen Zeitung”.
The police flew over the area near the Swiss border. The scree avalanche is about two kilometers long, but there is no evidence that people were injured in the landslide on the southern summit of the Flughorn, it said.
According to Walter, the mountains have been “more on the move” lately. Due to climate change, the glaciers would retreat and the permafrost would melt. However, he wanted to leave the assessment of this specific landslide to geologists, he emphasized.