Side of a Mountain Collapses in Switzerland, Video Shows

Side of a Mountain Collapses in Switzerland, Video Shows
Swiss Department of Transport Canton du Valais/Ludwig Haas
Jack Phillips
Updated:

Around 70,000 cubic feet of the Swiss Alps plummeted 1,000 feet into a valley, and it was captured on video.

The event took place on Mel de la Niva, 9,000-foot-tall mountain, and generated an avalanche, according to The Telegraph.

The noise from the rock fall echoed around the valley.

The hamlet below the mountain was evacuated before the rocks fell. A nearby road had been shut down the day before.

The clip showing the collapse was uploaded to YouTube, and it has since gone viral.

According to Swissinfo, in another incident, a Swiss mountain moved about 5 inches in a year before it crashed down.

“The mountain that sent four million cubic metres of rock through a Swiss village on Wednesday was known to be unstable. A section of the mountain moved 30 centimetres over the course of three years, but it was impossible to determine when it would collapse,” said the website.

“Permafrost only has a small role to play in this size of event,” Marcia Phillips from the SLF Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research told Swissinfo. “The geological structure of the mountain and water build up in its fractures were more important.”

Here are several more clips of rockslides and collapses that have gone viral over the past few years:

Jack Phillips
Jack Phillips
Breaking News Reporter
Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter who covers a range of topics, including politics, U.S., and health news. A father of two, Jack grew up in California's Central Valley. Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/jackphillips5
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