Thirty residents return home following Swiss landslide

Lötschental: around thirty residents able to return home Keystone-SDA

Around thirty residents were able to return to their homes following a landslide from the Birch glacier that destroyed nearby homes in the Blatten region.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Some homes in nearby Ferden, Kippel and Wiler were evacuated as a precautionary measure on 29 May.

The evacuation notice for the Wiler shopping area has also been lifted. “The increased risk of massive and uncontrolled lateral erosion along the bed of the Lonza brook no longer exists”, said the Lötschental command staff in a press release. However, arrangements remain in place for any evacuation.

+ Why do Swiss mountains collapse? It’s complicated

Tourists will also be allowed back into the valley from Saturday. The Lötschental regional command centre has announced that the closure of the road from Goppenstein for non-residents and tourists will be lifted from 11pm on Friday.

However, the whole of the municipality of Blatten, including the hiking trails, will remain closed.

On Thursday, residents of the Blatten hamlets of Eisten and Weissenried were able to return to their homes for an hour.

Translated from French by DeepL/mga

How we use technology to translate

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]