Village In Switzerland Told To Evacuate Over Rockslide Fears

A village in Switzerland has been told to evacuate after geologists warned on Tuesday that a large mass of rock looming overhead could come tumbling down, according to New York Time (NYT). The village of Brienz has a population of 85 and has been given time till Friday to evacuate. The geological monitoring of the region started in 2017 but in recent weeks, the experts have seen movement accelerate in more than 70 million cubic feet of dirt and rocks that make up the parts of the mountain that could fall.

"It's clearly a difficult situation, but we are prepared and trained for this," Peter Beyer, the governor of the region, told affected villagers on Tuesday, as per the outlet.

"Even if we hoped that what we were training for would never come to pass," Mr Beyer said at the community event.

Stefan Schneider, one of the engineers in charge of efforts to monitor the rock slide, said at the same event that the mountain could come down any moment but they cannot fully predict what is going to happen.

While the most likely scenario is a rockslide, Mr Schneider said another possibility would be the entire mountain side coming down in one long stream like "viscous honey".

He told CNN that "up to 2 million cubic meters of rock material will collapse or slide in the coming seven to 24 days".

Experts like Rebecca Dell, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, said that such event may be caused by glacier melt in the Alps triggered by climate change.

"This melt may destabilise the mountain slopes above towns and villages. If a slope becomes too unstable, events such as rockslides may occur," she told CNN.