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When a devastating landslide swallowed everything he owned swiss village and demolished his three-generation family-owned hotel in May, Lucas Kalbermatten was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness before the emotions arrived. But he decided not to pay attention to them for long and started taking action to rebuild.
The hotelier’s response reflects the mentality of many of Blatten’s more than 300 residents: They could have left their bucolic village in the southern Lötschental valley for dead – but instead they decided to try to see it alive again one day, and are taking steps to rebuild.
Authorities evacuated villagers and livestock, but a 64-year-old man died after 9 million cubic meters of snow, stones and mud fell from the Clyne. nesthorn Peaked on 28 May. The landslide left a scar about 2-1/2 kilometers (about 1-1/2 miles) wide and 100 meters (about 330 feet) high in places.
It all came down in about half a minute, covering the valley in a cloud of dust for several kilometers (miles). Over 90% of the village’s houses and buildings were destroyed.
“Obviously a lot of people were emotional, but I didn’t get too emotional,” Culbermatton said. “I was really realistic and the emotions, they came after three or four days.”
Locals say that if the death toll had been higher, many people would not have wanted to return to Blaton.
The Kalbermattans, whose website for the Hotel Edelweiss in Blatten shows it half submerged in the pea-soup-green pond created by the disaster, teamed up with other local families to set up a temporary hotel at the summit of a gondola lift in the neighboring village of Willer – one of three villages in the valley where most of the Blatten residents relocated.
“It is also a disaster for tourism in this valley because we do not 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 Bietshorn hotel and restaurant near Blatten, said it was “razed to smithereens” last May. His wife, Esther Bellwald, is leading the new hotel along with Kalbermatten. Its website said the staff’s families were “deeply shocked and extremely saddened” after the hotel was destroyed.
“This project is like a little light at the end of the tunnel,” Hubert said in knee-deep snow near the construction site, as short-sleeved workers worked briskly under sunny skies for the planned opening of the “Momentum” hotel on Dec. 18.
30 centimeters (12 in) of snowfall over the weekend gave the valley the white glow of winter again.
In recent months, work crews have restored power and telecommunications lines in the Blaton area, used backhoes to dig a drainage canal, and cleared overgrown roads leading to Blaton, allowing some evacuated residents to return briefly to collect some belongings. Some people used boats to reach the attics of submerged houses.
Others stood in line to claim lost items found by sanitation workers – heirlooms such as books, family photographs and wedding dresses.
Manfred Ebener, construction coordinator at Blatten, said about 400,000 cubic meters of rock and ice remain unstable on top of the mountain, making work delicate in the hot summer and autumn months. Snowfall and cold temperatures have helped solidify the rock and ice above, reducing the risk, but the frozen ground will make digging difficult.
“The movements are decreasing,” he said on a hill overlooking a snow-capped mud cone, referring to the changing geology that gives rise to landslides. “We are looking at next spring with a little concern: the whole process will be the other way around. When the ice melts, a lot of water flows back into the rock.”
Ebener says several years of cleanup work followed by the construction of a new village should pave the way for Blaten’s residents to return by 2030. Meanwhile, villagers – and much of Switzerland – must prepare for a new reality: global warming may leave its mark.
Swiss glaciologists have repeatedly expressed concern about thawing in recent years, largely due to global warming, which has accelerated the retreat of glaciers in Switzerland.
“I’m no scientist. I can’t determine 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.”
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AP journalist Michael Probst contributed to this report.