Residents of Swiss village swallowed by mudslide work to rebuild for return home

When a devastating landslide all but swallowed his Swiss village and toppled his three-generation family-owned hotel in May, Lukas Kalbermatten was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness before the emotions hit. But he chose not to dwell on them long and snapped into action to rebuild.

The hotelier's response sums up a mindset of many of the 300-odd residents of Blatten: They could have left their bucolic village in the southern Lötschental valley for dead — but instead decided to try to see it come alive again one day, and are taking steps to rebuild.

Authorities evacuated villagers and livestock, but a 64-year-old man was killed as 9 million cubic metres of ice, stone, and earth tumbled down from the Kleines Nesthorn peak on May 28. The landslide left a trail about 2-1/2 kilometres (about 1-1/2 miles) wide and 100 metres (about 330 feet) high in places.

It all came down in about a half-minute, coating the valley in plumes of dust for kilometres (miles). More than 90 per cent of village homes and buildings were destroyed.

“A lot of people were emotional, of course, but I didn't get too emotional," Kalbermatten said. "I was really realistic, and the emotions came later, after three or four days."

If the toll had been higher, locals say, many might not have wanted to return to Blatten.

Kalbermatten, whose website for his Hotel Edelweiss in Blatten shows it half-sunk in a pea-soup-green pond created by the disaster, joined up with other local families to set up a temporary hotel at the summit of a gondola lift in the neighbouring village of Wiler — one of three villages in the valley where most Blatten residents relocated.

“For tourism in this valley, it's also a catastrophe because we don't have enough beds for all the tourists," he said on Tuesday. “The most important thing for us is to do something quickly.”    Laurent Hubert, co-owner of the Nest- und Bietschhorn hotel and restaurant near Blatten, said it was “pulverised” last May. His wife, Esther Bellwald, is spearheading the new hotel with Kalbermatten. Its website said the families of the staff were “all deeply shaken and endlessly sad” after the hotel was destroyed.

“This project is a bit of the light at the end of the tunnel,” Hubert said in knee-deep snow near the construction site, with crews in short sleeves working fast under sunny skies for a planned December 18 opening of the “Momentum” hotel.

A 30-centimetre (12-inch) dump of snowfall over the weekend gave the valley its white wintertime gleam again.

In recent months, work crews have restored electricity and telecom lines to the Blatten area, used backhoes to dig a drainage canal, and cleared high roads that lead to Blatten, allowing some exiled residents to briefly return to collect some belongings. Some used rowboats to access the attics of inundated homes.

Others queued up to claim lost items found by cleanup crews — books, family photos and heirlooms like a wedding dress.

Manfred Ebener, the construction coordinator in Blatten, said some 400,000 cubic meters of rock and ice remain unstable atop the mountain, making for delicate work in the warmer summer and fall months. The snowfall and cool temperatures have helped solidify the rock and ice overhead, lowering the risks, but frozen ground will make digging harder.

“The movements are declining,” he said on a hillside overlooking the snow-covered mud cone, referring to the shifting geology that set off the landslide. "We are looking at next spring with a bit of concern: The whole process will take place the other way around. When the snow melts, a lot of water gets back into the rock.”

Ebener says several years of clearing work, followed by construction of a new village, should pave the way for inhabitants of Blatten to go back by 2030. In the meantime, the villagers — and much of Switzerland — must brace for a new reality: That global warming may be leaving its trace.

Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concerns about a thaw in recent years, attributed in large part to global warming, that has accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.

“I'm not a scientist. I can't judge what exactly these climate changes have to do with this event," he said. “But we live here in our valley and we can see that something is happening.”