GENEVA (AP) – Families in a tiny Swiss village were packing up after authorities issued an evacuation order with a weekend deadline because of the threat of a possible rockslide from an Alpine mountainside overhead.
Authorities in charge of the eastern village of Brienz said in a statement that they analysed the potential danger with geology and natural-hazards specialists and recommended the precautionary evacuation by 1pm on Sunday.
Member of the crisis management board in the town of Albula Christian Gartmann, which counts Brienz in its jurisdiction, said inhabitants of the village, with a population of 90, were making quick preparations.
A similar evacuation took place in May last year. The following month, a rockslide sent two million cubic metres of stone tumbling down the mountainside – but it missed the village.
Another 1.2 million cubic metres still loom, leading to the new order for evacuation.
“It has begun, immediately actually. People in the village organised themselves,” Gartmann said by phone. Some were “a little bit aggressive towards us” for ordering the evacuation, he said, adding that he understood their discontent.
“No one is in favour of his own evacuation. They would love to stay in their houses. They have been living in these houses for generations and they don’t want to leave their village,” Gartmann said. “But actually, it’s the mountain that orders us to evacuate them.”
In recent days, authorities have been advising villagers to take essential items, like computers, winter wear and school and work materials, for up to six months out of town,
he said.
“It’s not a total moving-out,” Gartmann said, summarising the order to locals as “take everything that you need for the next few months. If you have some cheap… sofa at home, leave it”.
Temporary lodging out of the village, which sits in between Italian and German-speaking parts of southeastern Switzerland, has already been arranged for about three-quarters of residents, and some were staying nearby with friends or family, he said.
