The Glacier That Buried a Village: Understanding the Collapse in Blatten, Switzerland

On the 28th of May, 2025, a massive landslide engulfed the Swiss village of Blatten. The trigger was the sudden collapse of a large segment of the Birch Glacier, which had been anchoring the mountain slope above. This was no ordinary landslide. The avalanche of mud, ice, and rock was so powerful that it registered as a magnitude 3.1 seismic event, caused not by tectonic forces but by gravity accelerated by climate change.