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LANDSLIDE

Eight people missing after Graubünden rockfall: police

Eight people, including German, Austrian and Swiss citizens, are missing following a landslide that forced the evacuation of several small villages in southeastern Switzerland on Wednesday, police said on Thursday.

Published: 24 August 2017 11:28 CEST
Updated: 24 August 2017 12:48 CEST
Eight people missing after Graubünden rockfall: police
Photo: Graubuenden police
“In the region of Val Bondasca, eight people who were there at the time of the landslide have not been found,” Graubünden cantonal police said in a statement.
 
Six of them were reported missing by relatives.
 
The landslide happened on the Piz Cengalo, producing a wave of rubble and mud that travelled down the Bondasca valley. 
 
The events triggered the area's rockfall alarm system – installed after a previous huge rockfall in 2012 – meaning before the debris approached the village of Bondo the fire service was able to evacuate its inhabitants, as well as people staying at two Swiss Alpine Club cabins nearby. 
 
 
However on Thursday morning they said search teams, assisted by a helicopter, had been looking through the night for the eight missing people.
 
“There are often hikers in the affected area,” Graubunden police spokesman Markus Walser told Blick, adding that the area did not have mobile phone reception.
   
“We hope this is the reason we have not been able to reach the people believed to be in the area,” he added.
 
Images showed an unstoppable mass of thick mud and sludge moving down the mountainside like lava, ripping apart at least one building in its path and partially engulfing others.
   
A broad swathe of farmland was covered in a grey, moving mass.
   
Police said 12 farm buildings, including barns and stables, had been destroyed by the flow of debris, while Graubunden's main southern highway, linking Stampa to Castasegna, was closed to traffic.

 
The following video shows the rockfall on the Piz Cengalo. 
 

LANDSLIDE

Norway rescue workers end search for landslide survivors

Norwegian rescue workers on Tuesday abandoned hope of finding survivors from a landslide that buried homes in a village six days ago, killing 10 people.

Published: 5 January 2021 16:43 CET
Norway rescue workers end search for landslide survivors
Photo: AFP

While three people remain unaccounted for, authorities said they are now presumed dead, bringing the official death toll from the landslide to 10, though only seven bodies have been recovered.

“We no longer have hope of finding people alive in the landslide,” Ida Melbo Øystese, police chief for Norway's eastern district, told a press briefing on Tuesday.

“Ten people have lost their lives, three are still missing,” she added.

“We have examined all the areas where it is possibly imaginable that someone has survived. We have done everything in our power,” Melbo Øystese stressed.

While no longer hoping to find survivors, the search continues for the bodies of those still missing.

Rescue workers have tackled snow and freezing temperatures in the search in and around the village of Ask about 25 kilometres northeast of Oslo.

The landslide hit in the early hours of December 30th, sweeping away nine buildings.

The seven recovered bodies, including those of a two-year-old girl, her father and her pregnant mother, were pulled out of the tangled mix of debris, earth and snow.

Rescue efforts had to be temporarily halted earlier on Tuesday when the earth began to shift again, although no one was hurt.

The landslide also left 10 people injured and more than 1,000 people from the municipality of Gjerdrum were evacuated, although some have since returned to their homes.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who went to Ask on Wednesday, said the landslide was “one of the largest” that Norway had ever experienced.

Local residents have left candles near the site of the tragedy.

The earth that shifted contains a specific clay called quick clay, present in Norway and Sweden, which can turn to fluid when overstressed.

 

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