Forest fire in southern Switzerland contained after overnight effort

Keystone

A forest fire in the municipality of Brusio, in canton Graubünden, was brought under control by emergency crews on Wednesday morning.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Five helicopters from Swisshelicopter and Heli Bernina, along with an army Super Puma, were used to support the fire service. The Rhaetian Railway line remains closed until further notice, with replacement buses running.

The fire near the Brusio circular viaduct covers an area of about two square kilometres between Campascio and Viano. A drone fitted with thermal imaging cameras could still be used to identify any remaining hotspots. This was confirmed to the Keystone-SDA news agency by the mayor of Brusio, Pietro Della Cà, who has been monitoring the operation throughout.

Services on the Rhaetian Railway are still suspended, and the road to the village of Viano has also been closed since Tuesday evening. Until at least midday, the village – home to around 60 people – could only be reached via a forest track. No evacuation was required.

The forest fire was reported at 3:40pm on Tuesday, the Graubünden cantonal police said in a statement on Wednesday. Firefighting operations resumed on Wednesday morning after crews kept watch overnight.

The Federal Office of Civil Aviation ordered a temporary airspace closure until Thursday evening to avoid disrupting the firefighting effort.

Initial findings suggest the fire started during the legal burning of wood waste. However, dry and windy conditions in recent days are believed to have caused it to spread, producing a thick cloud of smoke that blanketed the entire valley. Graubünden cantonal police have launched an investigation.

Alertswiss imposed a complete ban on outdoor fires across all valleys in the Italian‑speaking part of Graubünden on Wednesday morning.

Translated from German by AI/sp

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]