Swiss authorities impose visit restrictions on landslide-prone village of Brienz

Experience shows that landslides are more active in winter, said a spokesperson for the Albula municipality. Keystone-SDA

From Monday, new access rules will apply to the landslide-prone village of Brienz in canton Graubünden in southeastern Switzerland.

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In future, access will only be possible on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays between 9am and 5pm. In addition, the village may only be entered at one point.

Evacuated residents and owners of holiday flats and holiday homes will be granted access, the municipality of Albula said on Friday. Until now, it was generally possible to enter Brienz on any day of the week. Whether this was actually possible was decided by geologists.

In future, the village can only be entered at one point instead of two. The Vazerol checkpoint will be cancelled. This is intended to reduce the security costs for access to the village. In September and October, these were around CHF80,000 ($100,000).

+ One in six Swiss homes exposed to natural hazards

The costs were incurred, among other things, because the two access points were continuously manned by civilian security personnel. “On days when evacuees have access to the village, the development of the hazard situation must be monitored more closely than usual by the geologists of the early warning service,” the authorities said.

Brienz is evacuated for the second time

The organisational and financial effort should be reduced by reducing access to three days a week, said Christian Gartmann when asked by the Keystone-SDA news agency.

He added: “Experience shows that landslides become more active again in winter,” said a spokesperson for the municipality of Albula. It is expected that there will be fewer days in winter when the safety situation allows access to the village.

The 80 residents of Brienz, which belongs to the municipality of Albula, had to be evacuated for a second time in November 2024 due to new landslide risks.

A year earlier, on June 15, 2023, a huge rockslide almost buried the mountain village, which had been evacuated beforehand. A total of 1.7 million cubic metres of material came to a halt just before the edge of the locality.

Translated from German by DeepL/sb

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