(Reuters) – A large rockfall overnight narrowly missed a tiny Swiss mountain village that was evacuated last month due to the risk it could be buried under a collapsing mountainside, with local authorities saying on Friday they were on alert for another one.
Video footage from Swiss broadcaster Blick showed rocks tumbling down on Thursday evening from a mountain near the village of Brienz in the eastern canton of Graubuenden and then piling up over most of the mountainside on Friday morning.
Swiss authorities ordered 84 residents to abandon the village on May 12 over fears that it could be buried under the rocks. Since then, only some farmers were allowed to temporarily come back to work on nearby fields.
At the time, authorities from the Albula municipality that includes Brienz estimated up to 2 million cubic metres (2.6 million cubic yards) of rock could break off the nearby mountain. On Friday, they said in a Tweet that “a very large part” of that mountain has already broken off.
Climate change is putting Switzerland at increased risk of natural hazards, including an increase in erosion due to higher temperatures, Swiss authorities say.
(Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Miranda Murray)
