Jean-Christophe Bott\/Keystone via AP<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A video shared widely on social media showed the dramatic moment when the glacier partially collapsed, creating a huge cloud that covered part of the mountain as rock and debris came cascading down towards the village. <\/p>\n
Experts consulted by Reuters said it was difficult to assess the extent to which rising temperatures spurred by climate change had triggered the collapse because of the role the crumbling mountainside had played. <\/p>\n
Christian Huggel, a professor of environment and climate at the University of Zurich, said while various factors were at play in Blatten, it was known that local permafrost had been affected by warmer temperatures in the Alps. <\/p>\n
The loss of permafrost can negatively affect the stability of the mountain rock which is why climate change had likely played a part in the deluge, Huggel said. <\/p>\n
The extent of the damage to Blatten had no precedent in the Swiss Alps in the current or previous century, he added. <\/p>\n
The rubble of shattered wooden buildings could be seen on the flanks of the huge mass of earth in the drone footage. <\/p>\n
Buildings and infrastructure in Blatten, whose roughly 300 inhabitants were evacuated on May 19 after geologists had identified the risk of an imminent avalanche of rock and ice from above, were hit hard by the rockslide, Ebener said. <\/p>\n
SRF said houses were destroyed in the village nestled in the Loetschental valley in southern Switzerland. <\/p>\n
Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter expressed her solidarity with the local population as emergency services warned people the area was hazardous and urged them to stay away, closing off the main road into the valley. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s terrible to lose your home,\u201d Keller-Sutter said on X. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A huge chunk of a glacier in the Swiss Alps broke off on Wednesday afternoon, causing a deluge of ice, mud and rock to bury part of a mountain village evacuated earlier this month due to the risk of a rockslide, authorities said. One person is currently missing, officials said. Drone footage broadcast by Swiss…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}