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By Imogen Foulkes, BBC Geneva Correspondent, and the Visual Journalism team

31 May 2025 Europe (bbc.co.uk)

The village of Blatten has stood for centuries, then in seconds it was gone.

Scientists monitoring the Nesthorn mountain above the village in recent weeks saw that parts of it had begun to crumble, and fall on to the Birch glacier, putting enormous pressure on the ice.

Small rock and ice slides had begun to come down, and the village’s 300 residents, and even their livestock, were evacuated for their own safety. But everyone hoped the unstable rock would disperse incrementally over a few weeks, and that after that everyone could go home.

On Wednesday afternoon, that hope was dashed.

Nine million cubic metres of rock and ice came crashing down into the valley

It was such a force that it registered on every geological monitoring station in Switzerland

Barbara and Otto Jaggi, in the neighbouring village of Kippel, were getting their chimney fixed. The repairman was downstairs checking the system, when suddenly Barbara said: “There was loud banging, and the lights went out.”

At first, she and Otto thought the repairman had broken something, but then the banging, and now roaring, got louder, and the repairman came running up the stairs to them shouting “the mountain is coming”.

Kippel is over 4 km (2.5 miles) from Blatten. It and the entire valley were soon cloaked in dust. Blatten itself was completely destroyed; its homes, its church, its cosy Edelweiss hotel smashed to rubble.

Geologists had been monitoring the situation; that’s why Blatten was evacuated. But no-one, not even the experts, expected such huge violence.