A rockfall has been looming in the Swiss mountain village of Brienz for weeks. Live cameras showed falling boulders. During the night, the natural event reached its climax. But the danger is not over yet.
The rockfall near Brienz in Switzerland, which had been expected for weeks, happened overnight with a loud roar. Huge masses of rock tumbled down the slope and remained just a few meters in front of the old schoolhouse of the mountain village at an altitude of around 1100 meters. A road above the village lies meters high under rubble, said Christian Gartmann, spokesman for the municipality of Albula, to which Brienz belongs.
The rockfall happened between 11 p.m. and midnight. It was very loud in the whole valley basin. The municipality’s crisis team met twice during the night and evaluated the first photos early in the morning.
“Brienz was very lucky,” Gartmann told SRF. “We are not assuming at the moment that there was any damage.” Whether the residential buildings and the church were really completely spared should be checked during a helicopter flight during the day.
Splinter stones can shoot “like a cannonball”.
“Sometimes in such events, boulders crash into other boulders. Then there are splinter stones from the size of a fist to a soccer ball,” said Gartmann. They could shoot hundreds of meters through the air “like a cannonball” and damage window panes or other parts of the building.
Brienz in the canton of Graubünden, around 25 kilometers as the crow flies southwest of Davos, has been closed for weeks. Nobody stays there. Only installed cameras recorded what was happening 24/7.
Huge boulders had already fallen on Wednesday. At first glance, they remained lying on the meadows in front of the village. Before and after pictures now show the massive changes in the landscape. The day before, bare rocks, individual boulders, light and dark rock, as well as meadows, trees and a wooden hut could still be seen in the area. On Friday, all of this lay under a gigantic mountain of gray rubble.
Tour de Suisse stage cancelled
As a precaution, roads and railway lines below the village had been closed. Train traffic to the resort of St. Moritz will be diverted because the route between Tiefencastel and Filisur is closed, as a spokesman for the Rhaetian Railway said.
The sixth stage start of the Tour de Suisse bicycle race was initially moved from La Pont to Chur because of the rock fall. The stage was later officially canceled due to the fatal fall of Swiss professional cyclist Gino Mäder.
Climate change not the trigger
Unlike the recent landslide in Tyrol in Austria, climate change is not the trigger in Brienz. Elsewhere, it is causing the permafrost – the ice that holds rocks together at high altitudes like glue – to melt.
Around 100,000 cubic meters fell in Tyrol last Sunday. Hundreds of meters of the southern summit of the Flughorn massif, including the summit cross, broke off. The rock material landed far away from inhabited areas and endangered no one. According to experts, the mountain above Brienz has been in motion for thousands of years. The landslide had accelerated over the years.
Villagers safe since mid-May
This week, the rock masses have already slid at a speed of 40 meters per day. When things got too hot in the spring, the municipality decided to bring the approximately 80 residents to safety. They have been staying with relatives or in holiday apartments in the region since mid-May.
In Brienz, geologists expected two million cubic meters of rock to slide – 20 times as much as in Tyrol. It is not yet possible to estimate how much of it fell during the night. In addition, it is still unclear whether rocks will continue to slide towards the village. “We are currently assuming that this was unfortunately not all,” said community spokesman Gartmann. Accordingly, it is not foreseeable when people can return to the village.