Swiss president pledges aid for Alpine villagers left homeless after glacier collapse
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GENEVA (AP) — Switzerland’s president on Friday said evacuees from an Alpine village whose homes and businesses were destroyed by a landslide caused by a glacier collapse were “not alone,” and the government was calculating ways to help.
Karin Keller-Sutter spoke after a helicopter flight to see for herself the damage to the village of Blatten that was largely destroyed on Wednesday as an estimated 10 millions of tons of mud, ice and rock thundered down from the Birch glacier overhead.
“The force with which the mountain here wiped out an entire village is indescribable,” Keller-Sutter said. “I’d like to tell you all that you’re not alone. The whole of Switzerland is with you, and not just (people) in Switzerland.”
Officials limited access to the area and warned that waters from the Lonza River, which has been dammed up by deposits stacked tens of meters high over a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) swath of valley, had pooled into a lake. The future course of those waters could not yet be predicted precisely.
“Unfortunately, the danger has not yet been averted,” Keller-Sutter said.
While the authorities were not able to prevent the natural disaster, the country has the “expertise and financial resources” to cope with such events, she added.
Blatten had been evacuated about 10 days earlier after experts determined a growing threat from the loosening glacier. However, a 64-year-old man remains missing and authorities have called off a search for him.
Stephane Ganzer, an elected official who runs security in the Valais, said no evacuations were as-yet planned for villages downstream from Blatten that could face flooding if the Lonza’s welled-up waters break through the pileup of mud.
“We don’t want anybody else to go missing,” he said. “We will put no person in danger on the ground: No police officer, no soldier, no specialist, no member of civil security or fire squads.”
He added: “Someone asked me before: ‘Who’s the chief in charge here?’ And I replied, there’s only one chief: nature.”