Video shows Swiss village being flattened by glacier collapse

The village of Blatten's mayor, Matthias Bellwald, said 'the unimaginable' had happened before promising that the village would make it through.

The small Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed by fragments of a collapsed glacier.

Footage of the natural disaster shows the tiny mountain town, home to only 300 people, becoming engulfed in debris after a 1.5 million cubic metre glacier collapsed and hurtled into the Loetschental valley.

Aside from its picturesque, snowcapped surroundings, Blatten is known for being along the route to the Tour de Suisse, a multi-stage bike race often used by participants as a warm-up to the Tour de France.

On Wednesday, Matthias Bellwald, Blatten’s mayor, said “the unimaginable” had happened before promising that the village would make it through.

Meanwhile, Stephane Ganzer, the head of security in the southern Valais region, said on the local TV channel Canal9, “What I can tell you at the moment is that about 90 per cent of the village is covered or destroyed, so it’s a major catastrophe that has happened here in Blatten,” adding that it wasn’t immediately clear whether anyone was injured, and that the army had been mobilized after earlier indications that the movement of the glacier was accelerating.

“There’s a risk that the situation could get worse,” he told Canal9.

Despite the scale of the disaster, no deaths have been reported. The village was evacuated on May 19 as experts had anticipated the collapse.

According to Reuters, an assessment of the rock movement on the mountainside led authorities to believe that an unprecedented volume was poised to tumble down the mountainside.