Swiss villagers can return home after rockslide near miss

GENEVA — Authorities said on Monday that inhabitants of a small Swiss village, which narrowly escaped being wiped off the map when part of the mountain towering above it collapsed, are now safe to return home.

The village of Brienz, near the plush ski resort of Davos in the eastern Graubunden canton, was emptied of its 84 inhabitants in May after the authorities said the Insel peak had become unstable.

A whole section of the mountain collapsed during the night of June 15 to 16, sending around 1.5 million cubic metres of rock crashing down in the darkness, stopping right at the edge of the village.

A metre-high wall of mud and rock came to a halt just in front of the school.

“Fifty two days after the evacuation and 18 days after the big landslide, daily life can resume its course in Brienz,” the municipal authorities said in a statement on Monday.

The village “is now safe again”, they said.

An area to the north of Brienz is still off limits though, and anyone who wanders into the zone can be fined up to 5,000 Swiss francs ($5,580).

The overhead airspace ban will be lifted on Tuesday.

The mountain is still being monitored by an early warning system and were it to become unstable again, the villagers and their livestock could be evacuated once more.

The terrace on which Brienz is located is also on the move, having shifted a few centimetres per year over the last century. The slide has sharply accelerated over the past 20 years.

To slow the process down, a tunnel was dug under the village in 2021. It should drain the water and slow down the slide.