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Swiss village evacuated over threat of rockslide

Published: 17 Jun. 2025, 18:48

View of the village Brienz and the ″Brienzer Rutsch″, taken in Brienz-Brinzauls, Switzerland, May 12, 2023. [AP/YONHAP]

Swiss authorities cleared a village in the country's east over a potential rockslide, three weeks after a mudslide submerged a vacated village in the southwest.

Residents of Brienz/Brinzauls, about 25 miles southwest of Davos, were being barred from entering the village because a rock mass on a plateau overhead has “accelerated so rapidly that it threatens to collapse,” a statement from local officials said Monday.

Farm work in the area was also halted, and livestock owners moved their animals out of nearby pastures due to early warning signs on Sunday.

Authorities said the region is closely monitored by early-warning systems in the town, which is no stranger to such evacuations. Villagers had been ordered out of Brienz/Brinzauls in November and in June two years ago before a huge mass of rock tumbled down the mountain, narrowly missing the village.

The mountain and the rocks on it have been shifting since the last ice age. While glacier melt has affected the precariousness of the rocks over millennia, local authorities say melting glaciers due to “man-made” climate change in recent decades hasn't been a factor.

The centuries-old village straddles German- and Romansch-speaking parts of the eastern Graubunden region and sits at an altitude of about 3,800 feet. Today, it has less than 100 residents.

AP