Ticino's Villages at Risk of Landslides
- Torrential rains in Ticino's Alpine villages led to mountain collapses.
- Debate arises on whether valleys affected by climate change should be abandoned.
- Uncertainty looms over the future of Ticino's threatened villages.
On the night of June 29, a catastrophic landslide struck the village of Fontana, located at the entrance to Switzerland's Val Bavona, burying half the community under a massive pile of rock. Local residents reported that relentless rainfall had persisted for hours, raising concerns about the stability of the mountain, which had shown signs of instability for months. One villager described the terrifying moment he was awakened by a deafening roar, only to witness the destruction of an unoccupied house above him, reduced to rubble by the landslide. The disaster, which occurred at approximately 11:30 PM, resulted in significant infrastructural damage, cutting off the only road in Val Bavona in multiple locations. Over a month later, engineering teams are still working diligently to restore access through the debris. Despite the advanced monitoring systems in place across the Swiss Alps, the event claimed eight lives, with one individual still unaccounted for, marking an unusually high death toll for such geological occurrences in the region. Experts attribute the increasing frequency of such incidents to the melting of permafrost in high-altitude areas, which has destabilized previously secure land masses. The Swiss Confederation's Alpine cantons—Valais, Grisons, and Ticino—have experienced a surge in geological events, including blocked roads and buried tunnels, raising alarms about the safety of high-altitude infrastructure and the potential for future disasters.