A huge landslide thundered into the valley at Piz Bernina (4048 meters) in the border area between Switzerland and Italy. Helicopters went up to search for those buried.
St. Moritz/Sondrio - The Piz Bernina (4048 meters) is the easternmost four-thousander in the Alps and at the same time the only one in the Eastern Alps. The mountain range on the border between the Swiss canton of Graubünden and the Italian province of Lombardy is a legend among mountaineers. The massif has several secondary peaks, one of which is the Piz Scerscen (3970 meters), the direct southwestern neighbor of the Piz Bernina.
On Sunday morning, a huge part of the summit structure collapsed below the summit of this mountain giant. According to
southeastschweiz.ch
they broke up
Around 7 a.m. at an altitude of around 3,400 meters, more than a million cubic meters of rock came out. In view of the huge masses, the Bernina section of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC speaks of a landslide as it has a volume of more than a million cubic meters of rock.
A million cubic meters of stone came loose from below the summit and thundered into the valley
The huge amounts of rock, which had mixed with glacier ice, rolled over a rocky edge into the depths and poured over the high valley of Val Roseg. The tongue of the huge ice and stone avalanche is five kilometers long. According to the
Engadiner Post
, she
stopped about one and a half kilometers from the Hotel Roseg.
Anita Senti, media spokeswoman for the Graubünden cantonal police, told the portal that after the report of the landslide was received early on Sunday morning, the area was searched with a helicopter to check whether people or buildings had been injured. “Fortunately, nothing in this regard was discovered during the reconnaissance flight. We also haven’t received any reports of missing persons,” said Senti.
Helicopters searched the rubble for missing people
According to 20min.ch,
the Graubünden cantonal police were
informed about the landslide by ski tourers. “The fall was also registered by the earthquake service,” said Senti. “To date there have been no reports of missing persons.” According to
Blick.ch
, there were people who stayed overnight in the nearby Tschiervahütte. But these are fine.
The Swiss professional mountaineer Roger Schaeli was on the opposite slope at the time of the landslide and reported on Facebook: “At 6:55 a.m. we were climbing to Crast' Agüzza at 3870m. I counted about 50 other ski mountaineers on the way to Piz Bernina. At the same moment there was a large ice and rock eruption on the other side of the valley, at Piz Scerscen 3970m. Luckily, the valley side of the exit is less frequented in winter and no one was buried!” If a person had gotten into the gigantic stream of rubble, it would have literally crushed them.
Several paths were buried by the landslide
The debris flow blocks part of the access to several Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) huts. According to SAC, the approaches to the Coaz and Chamanna huts as well as all crossings of the Tschierva glacier to Piz Roseg, Piz Scerscen and Piz Aguagliouls were overrun by the debris flow. According to SAC, people travel these trails at any time of the year.
According to the SAC Bernina, a rock fall had already occurred on Piz Scerscen in October last year, which covered almost the entire width of the Tschierva glacier at an altitude of around 3,200 meters. In January and February 2023, several rockfalls also occurred on the neighboring peak Piz Umur. This led to the closure of the lower ascent route from the Tschiervahütte to the busy Eselsgrat on Piz Roseg.
More and more summit trails are closed due to the risk of rock falls
There is a heated discussion about the landslide on Facebook: “Unbelievable, unfortunately in my opinion it will be the sad fate of many mountains in the Alps. If there is less permafrost and ice holds everything together, landslides will become more common,” writes one user. Another user sees it similarly: “Yes, of course we are almost at the tipping point of Greenland melting, so I am no longer surprised by global warming.” Another user adds: “Yes, the ice in the cracks that holds the rocks together, thaws. But sometimes it’s just gravitational phenomena.”
Rockfalls have been part of everyday life in the Alps for months. But last year in Austria, a gigantic landslide in the Silvretta area caused horror. Several paths are closed here, this also applies to the Hochvogel in the Allgäu, which is in danger of collapsing. A peak in the Small Dolomites in northern Italy also collapsed last year.