Tourist trails have been closed on Mount Vesuvius
in southern Italy as firefighters tackle a huge blaze on the volcano’s
slopes, while officials warned of another “challenging day” for those
working to contain France’s biggest wildfire since 1949.
The
wildfire on Mount Vesuvius, close to Naples, broke out a few days ago
and by Saturday afternoon had stretched to about 3km (1.9 miles) wide,
destroying hundreds of hectares of woodland and killing wild animals.
Thick smoke could be seen from Pompeii and Naples.
Six
Canadair firefighting planes have been dispatched from the state fleet
and teams made up of firefighters, soldiers, forestry corps, police and
civil protection volunteers from across Italy are working on the ground.
Flames and smoke rise from a wildfire at the Vesuvius national park in Terzigno on Saturday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Drones were being used to monitor the spread of the fire, the national
fire service said. The operation has been complicated by the latest
heatwave.
Vesuvius national park authorities said the
volcano’s trail network had been closed for safety reasons and to
facilitate firefighting and clean-up operations in the areas affected.
Pompeii’s archaeological park remains open to the public.
The
fire has mainly affected the Terzigno pine forest as well as woodlands
close to the small towns of Trecase, Ercolano and Ottaviano at the foot
of the volcano.
Francesco Ranieri, the mayor
of Terzigno, told Italian media the situation on Saturday night was
“very critical” although the efforts of firefighters ensured the flames
did not reach any homes.
The cause of the fire
has not been identified although there are strong suspicions that it
was arson, with Ranieri suggesting there may be “a criminal hand” behind
it.
The fires have charred and destroyed the landscape in Jonquières, France. Photograph: Getty Images
Firefighters in France’s southern Aude region,
meanwhile, have managed to contain a massive wildfire, which killed one
person and injured several others, although authorities warned that work
on Sunday would be complicated by intense heat and a hot, dry wind.
“It’s
a challenging day, given that we are likely to be on red alert for
heatwave from 6pm, which will not make things any easier,” said
Christian Pouget, the prefect of the Aude department.
Europe
is far from alone in suffering frequent wildfires. The weather
conditions in which they flourish, marked by heat, drought and strong
winds, is increasing in some parts of all continents.
A vintage Citreon car burnt by a wildfire in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, France. Photograph: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
Human-caused climate breakdown is responsible for
a higher likelihood of fire and bigger burned areas in southern Europe,
northern Eurasia, the US and Australia, with some scientific evidence of increases in southern China.
Climate breakdown has increased the wildfire season by about two weeks on average across the globe.
An energy company seeking to hike utility bills in New York City
by 11% disconnected more than 88,000 households during the first six
months of 2025, signaling a crackdown on families struggling to cover
rising energy costs even as the climate crisis drives extreme
temperatures.
Con Edison, the monopoly utility
that provides electricity to 3.6m homes across the country’s largest
city and neighboring Westchester county, disconnected almost 2.5% of all
its customers between January and June this year – triple the total
number of families left without power in 2024. One in five disconnected
homes remain without power for at least a week.
The
utility shut off 16,327 households in the month leading up to 25 June.
New York was hit by its first heatwave between 23 and 25 June, breaking
daytime and night-time records in Central Park and driving a surge in emergency room visits.
A construction crew from a ConEdison electric
repair team continues road work in the Chinatown neighborhood of New
York on 15 February 2025. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
New York is among the most expensive places for
electricity, with families shouldering above-inflation price hikes in
recent years on top of unaffordable housing and the broader cost of
living crisis stemming from the Covid pandemic.
In the past five years, more than 40% of New
Yorkers have fallen into arrears, and 23% of households were
disconnected at least once – leaving families without access to a
fridge, internet, cooking facilities and heat or cooling until they can
find the money to pay for reconnection.
Black
and Latino New Yorkers are more than twice as likely as white residents
to fall behind, and almost eight times more likely to have a utility
shutoff, according to the 2024 Poverty Tracker/Robin Hood report on energy insecurity.
“Disconnection
is an effective cost recovery strategy but it’s also completely
inhumane. It’s traumatizing for families and costs some people their
lives,” said Diana Hernandez, co-author of the report and associate
professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University.
“People want to pay their bills but they are unaffordable for too many families.”
People walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on a
day where the heat index is expected to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in
New York on 25 July 2025. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Almost 16% of New York homes – one in six Con Edison residential
customers – were behind on their energy bills at the end of 2024, with
debts totaling $948m, according to data submitted by the utility to the
state regulator.
But as Con Edison ramped up disconnections over
the past six months, the debt fell to $840m by the end of June with
12.5% of New Yorkers now behind on their bills.
At
the current rate, Con Edison could disconnect 150,000 households by the
end of the year, the highest number by any utility in the country,
according to Mark Wolfe, an energy economist.
“Energy
is unaffordable so people fall behind. The disconnection numbers show
that Con Edison is aggressively cracking down, and life is going to
become harder for poor people in New York,” said Wolfe, executive
director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association
(Neada).
Researchers at Neada, the organization for state directors of the federally funded Low Income Home Energy
Assistance Program (Liheap), collated the debt and disconnection
figures submitted to the New York Public Services Commission, the
regulator.
There is no demographic breakdown
but people of color, households with children, renters in small
buildings, and people with pre-existing medical conditions who rely on
electronic devices such as oxygen dispensers, as well as Bronx residents
are all more likely to experience energy poverty and therefore a
disconnection, the 2024 Robin Hood report found.
A
Con Edison spokesperson said: “Termination of service is a last resort,
and we do so only after extensive outreach and exhausting all other
options … nearly two-thirds of residential customers in arrears are on
payment plans. It is essential that our customers pay their bills to
maintain safe service and the most reliable system in the nation.”
Most customers were reconnected within 24 hours and 80% within a week, the spokesperson added.
A
woman uses a fan to cool off on a day where the heat index is expected
to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New York on 25 July 2025. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Nationwide, an estimated one in three households
experience energy poverty – the inability to access sufficient amounts
of electricity and other energy sources due to financial hardship.
Low-income households, people of color and states with the fewest social
safety nets are disproportionately affected, and millions of families
are regularly forced to ration food, medicines, energy and other
essentials
Across New York state – and the
country – a patchwork of regulations prevent some households from being
shut off on very hot or cold days, but millions are not protected at
all.
New York, like much of the US, is
susceptible to extreme highs and low temperatures, and the climate
crisis is driving more frequent and more intense heatwaves.
The
number of heat deaths has been rising over the past decade, and on
average 525 people in New York City die prematurely each year for
heat-related reasons – the vast majority due to the impact high
temperatures and humidity have on existing medical conditions, according
to the latest figures from the city’s department of public health.
Heat
kills twice Black New Yorkers at twice the rate of white residents due
to past and current structural racism that creates economic, healthcare,
housing, energy and other systems that benefit white people and
disadvantage people of color, the report found.
Most deaths occur in homes without access to a functioning air conditioning. Citywide, 11% of
New Yorkers do not have air conditioners at home but the rate is much
higher in low-income communities of color. One study found that a fifth
of renters do not use their air conditioner due to cost.
And
while protections have improved in recent years, it has not been enough
to shield families hit hardest by rising energy prices, rents and
inflation – or the increasingly brutal heat and humidity.
According
to its website, Con Edison currently suspends disconnections on the
hottest and coldest days based on forecasts from the National Weather
Service. In the summer, the utility will not disconnect a family the day
of or day before the heat index – what the temperature feels like when
humidity is taken into account – is forecast to hit 90F (32.2C) at
Central Park – one of the shadiest parts of the city. It also suspends
disconnections for two days after a 90F heat index day.
Yet
temperatures in some neighborhoods in the Bronx and upper Manhattan,
where there are fewer trees, less access to air conditioning, more Black
and Latino residents, and most heat deaths, exceed Central Park by 6 to
8 degrees due to the heat island effect, according to one study from 2022.
Energy poverty is a chronic problem for many New Yorkers.
A ConEdison van in the Bronx borough of New York on 20 July 2019. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Bloomberg via Getty Images
New York state is the largest recipient of
Liheap, the chronically underfunded bipartisan federal program that
helped about 6m households keep on top of energy bills last year – and
which narrowly survived being cut completely from Trump’s 2026 budget.
In
fiscal year 2024-25, New York received $379m (almost 10%) of the total
Liheap fund, and Governor Kathy Hochul invested an additional $35m to
supplement support for heating bills in January after Liheap money ran
out with months of winter still to go.
In
the summer, the Liheap program only covers the cost of an air
conditioning unit and installation for qualifying low-income households
in New York – not energy bills. A city program can provide a
means-tested loan for working families in arrears.
Disconnections
declined during the pandemic thanks to a statewide moratorium and debt
forgiveness schemes, as well as child tax credits and a boost to food
stamps among other federal programs that helped lift millions of
Americans out of poverty. But the Covid-era social safety programs have
now all been terminated, and recent focus groups conducted by Hernandez
and her colleagues found people still struggling to recover and
rationing energy use because they were so concerned about rising bills.
“The
city has got better at advocating for households disproportionately
impacted by disconnections but it’s a drop in the bucket of where it
should be,” said Hernandez, the energy justice expert. “The 88,000
households disconnected are people who have done everything to get the
money and still couldn’t get caught up. It illustrates families have
been left completely exposed.”
Yet energy costs are about to get even higher in New York.
People cool off at a fire hydrant in New York on 25 June 2025. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make
electricity production more expensive, leading to residents paying $140 a
year on average more by 2030, according to analysis by Energy Innovation.
The bill also slashes benefits such as Snap (food stamps) and Medicaid,
which will put further pressure on millions of families.
Meanwhile,
Con Edison is under fire from city and state politicians including
Hochul and the city comptroller (chief finance officer) and former
mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, for requesting a rate hike of 11% for
electricity and 13% for gas, which the regulator is currently
considering. Con Ed’s proposed electricity rate hike could raise the
average household bill by $372 next year. (The utility provides gas to
1.1m homes.)
“The combination of rising
temperatures, rising electricity rates, the possible termination of the
federal Liheap program, and this increase in shutoffs by Con Ed risks
dramatically increasing heat-related illness and deaths for New
Yorkers,” Lander told the Guardian.
“There
needs to be strategies in place so that people will pay their bills –
but to punish people who are poor by cutting off their electricity ever,
but especially in extreme heat or wintertime, is inhumane. It is a form
of debtors’ prison.”
Con Edison said it
provided $311m in bill discounts to income-eligible customers last year,
and the regulator (PSC) recently expanded the Energy Affordability
Program to help more vulnerable residents.
Firefighters in Southern France battle blaze larger than the size of Paris
Hundreds of firefighters are battling to stop the spread of a fast-moving wildfire in southern France after one woman died and nine people were injured as the blaze scorched a vast area of the Corbières hills.
The
blaze burned an area the size of Paris over one afternoon and night and
was still burning on Wednesday evening, making it the second biggest
fire in France in 50 years.
The French prime minister, François Bayrou, who visited the area, described the fire as “a catastrophe of unprecedented scale”.
“What is happening today is linked to climate change and drought,” he said.
The
fire, which started on Tuesday afternoon, had burned 16,000 hectares
(39,537 acres) inland from the Mediterranean near the Spanish border. It
began in the village of Ribaute in the Aude department, spreading
across the rural, wooded area of the Corbières, famous for its vineyards
and medieval
A woman died in her home and one person was in a
critical condition with severe burns, according to the Aude prefecture.
Several firefighters were also injured. At least 25 homes were destroyed
or damaged. Police are investigating the cause of the fire.
The
environment ministry said the fire had destroyed the same amount of
land in 24 hours that wildfires typically burned across France in a
year.
“This is an exceptional fire that
illustrates the scale of the consequences of the climate crisis,” the
ministry said in a statement.
The wildfire remained “very active’’ on Wednesday, local authorities said.
The
mayor of the village of Jonquières, Jacques Piraux, said all residents
had been evacuated. “It’s a scene of sadness and desolation,” he told
the broadcaster BFM TV. “It looks like a lunar landscape, everything is
burned. More than half or three-quarters of the village has burned down.
It’s hellish.”
Lucie Roesch, the secretary
general of the Aude prefecture, said: “The fire is advancing in an area
where all the conditions are ripe for it to progress. We are monitoring
the edges and the back of the fire to prevent flare-ups.”
Planes
were dropping water on the flames but Roesch said: “This fire will keep
us busy for several days. It’s a long-term operation.”
Weather
conditions were expected to remain unfavourable due to strong winds,
rising temperatures and dry vegetation in the area, officials said.
Camping
grounds and at least one village were partially evacuated and several
roads closed. Residents and tourists were asked to remain in their homes
unless told to leave by firefighters. Some tourists who were evacuated
from campsites spent the night in municipal buildings.
One
person told France 2 TV: “I wanted to go back to my house to get my
things but I couldn’t go in. We’re waiting to see what the damage was.
When I left, there were flames at the foot of the house.”
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on
social media: “All of the nation’s resources are mobilised.” He called
on people to exercise “the utmost caution”.
The
Aude department, in particular, has experienced an increase in
wildfires in recent years, aggravated by low rainfall and the removal of
vineyards, which used to help slow their advance.
Aude Damesin, who lives in the town of Fabrezan,
told Agence France-Presse that the frequency of wildfires was taking a
toll on residents. “I find it tragic to see so many fires since the
beginning of the summer,” she said. “It’s terrible for the wildlife, the
flora and for the people, who are losing everything.”
Last month a wildfire that reached the southern port city of Marseille left about 300 people injured.
Southern
Europe has experienced large fires this summer. Fires have burned more
than 25,700 hectares of Portugal since the beginning of 2025, according
to the European Forest Fire Information System. There have also been
wildfires in central Spain, Turkey, Greece and in the Balkans.
Scientists
say climate breakdown is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of
heat and dryness, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires. Europe
is the world’s fastest-warming continent,
with temperatures increasing at twice the speed of the global average
since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change
Service.
Researcher
Alyssa Gehman of the Hakai Institute counts and measures sunflower sea
stars in the Burke Channel on the Central Coast of British Columbia in
2023.Bennett Whitnell / Hakai Institute via APBy The Associated PressStarting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass
die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20
species and continues today.
WASHINGTON
— Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed
more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a
decade-long epidemic.
Sea
stars — often known as starfish — typically have five arms and some
species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to
tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green.
Starting
in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off
from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species
and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea
star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak's first
five years.
"It's really
quite gruesome," said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the
Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the
cause.
Healthy sea stars have
"puffy arms sticking straight out," she said. But the wasting disease
causes them to grow lesions and "then their arms actually fall off."
The
culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a
study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The
findings "solve a long-standing question about a very serious disease
in the ocean," said Rebecca Vega Thurber, a marine microbiologist at
University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the
study.
It took more than a
decade for researchers to identify the cause of the disease, with many
false leads and twists and turns along the way.
Early
research hinted the cause might be a virus, but it turned out the
densovirus that scientists initially focused on was actually a normal
resident inside healthy sea stars and not associated with disease, said
Melanie Prentice of the Hakai Institute, co-author of the new study.
Healthy populations of sunflower sea stars in the Knight Inlet fjord of the Central Coast of British Columbia in 2023.Grant Callegari / Hakai Institute via AP
Other efforts missed the real
killer because researchers studied tissue samples of dead sea stars that
no longer contained the bodily fluid that surrounds the organs.
But
the latest study includes detailed analysis of this fluid, called
coelomic fluid, where the bacteria Vibrio pectenicida were found.
"It's
incredibly difficult to trace the source of so many environmental
diseases, especially underwater," said microbiologist Blake Ushijima of
the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who was not involved in
the research. He said the detective work by this team was "really smart
and significant."
Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars.
Prentice
said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining
sea stars are still healthy — and consider whether to relocate them or
breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost
almost all their sunflower sea stars.
Scientists
may also test if some populations have natural immunity, and if
treatments like probiotics may help boost immunity to the disease.
Such
recovery work is not only important for sea stars, but for entire
Pacific ecosystems because healthy starfish gobble up excess sea
urchins, researchers say.
Sunflower
sea stars "look sort of innocent when you see them, but they eat almost
everything that lives on the bottom of the ocean," said Gehman.
"They're voracious eaters."
With
many fewer sea stars, the sea urchins that they usually munch on
exploded in population — and in turn gobbled up around 95% of the kelp
forest s in Northern California within a decade. These kelp forests
provide food and habitat for a wide variety of animals including fish,
sea otters and seals.
Researchers
hope the new findings will allow them to restore sea star populations —
and regrow the kelp forests that Thurber compares to "the rainforests
of the ocean."
The Amir
Kabir dam in Iran's northern Alborz mountain range on June 1, 2025. Many
of the country's dams are at alarmingly low levels. Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
Iran’s capital Tehran could be weeks away from “day zero,”
experts say — the day when taps run dry for large parts of the city — as
the country suffers a severe water crisis. Key reservoirs are
shrinking, authorities are scrambling to reduce water consumption and
residents are desperately trying to conserve it to stave off
catastrophe.
“If we do not make urgent decisions today, we will face a
situation in the future that cannot be solved,” President Masoud
Pezeshkian said at a cabinet meeting Monday.
Water is inherently short in supply in this arid nation. The
difference is this crisis is hitting the capital, said Kaveh Madani,
director of the United Nations University Institute for Water,
Environment and Health.
Tehran, home to around 10 million people, could run out of
water altogether if consumption levels are not reduced, experts fear.
“We are talking about a possible day zero within weeks,” said Madani,
who previously served as the deputy head of Iran’s Department of
Environment.
The roots of the crisis lie in a tangle of factors including
what engineers describe as decades of poor water management and an
increasing imbalance between supply and demand.
It’s all compounded by climate change.
Iran is experiencing one of its worst droughts on record,
and its fifth consecutive year of drought. The country is also baking
under brutal heat. Temperatures spiked above 122 degrees Fahrenheit
in parts of the country this month, according to climatologist and
weather historian Maximiliano Herrera. “Iran seems almost perennially in
a record-heat status,” he told CNN.
In response to the crisis, authorities have reduced water
pressure in Tehran by almost half, affecting around 80% of households,
the governor of Tehran Province Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian said Monday.
For people living in tall apartment buildings, that can mean
no water supply at all. One man who lives on the 14th floor in Tehran
says his taps often run dry.
Water is being delivered to the capital by tankers, and
residents who can afford it are rushing to install storage tanks, Madani
said. “We have never had a situation like this… this is new to Tehran.”
Last week, the Iranian government declared a one-day public
holiday in Tehran Province, as well as other regions across the country,
in an effort to save water and electricity.
It’s now considering giving people in Tehran a week’s public
holiday, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said in a press
briefing Monday, in hopes people will temporarily leave the city,
cutting water demand.
Water tankers in Tehran on Sunday, June 15, 2025. AFP/Getty Images
Water experts point to mismanagement as a big factor in the crisis.
Human activities, including excessive groundwater pumping,
inefficient farming practices and unchecked urban water use have pushed
the region “toward what can only be described as water bankruptcy,” said
Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering
and Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.
Madani echoes this. It is “water bankruptcy, because it’s
not a crisis anymore… (it’s) a situation where some of the damages are
irreversible,” he said.
In Tehran, so much water has been pumped from aquifers to
support its increasing population that parts of the city are sinking,
sometimes by more than 10 inches a year.
The capital “is grappling with a systemic, long-term
imbalance that threatens the very foundations of water security for its
residents,” AghaKouchak told CNN.
Climate change is making a bad situation much worse. Iran
has seen a more than 40% decrease in rainfall this year compared to the
long-term average, and the Tehran Regional Water Company says dams that
supply the capital are at about 21% of their capacity, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.
All but one of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing water stress, said Iran’s energy minister Abbas Aliabadi, as reported by Mehr News. When asked about the possibility of water rationing, he said: “I hope this does not happen.”
A
resident tries to cool off in Tehran, Iran on July 22, 2025. Public
institutions in many provinces, including the capital Tehran, were
closed on July 23 in an effort to conserve electricity and water. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty Images
Experts say there are no easy answers to this crisis.
The government is opting for “band aid” measures, such as
new water transfer projects, Madani said. Technical solutions such as
desalination and wastewater recycling must be part of picture, he added,
but “these address the symptoms for a while without curing the cause.”
He advocates for a wholesale overhaul of the economy to move
away from water-intensive agriculture — which currently accounts for
about 90% of Iran’s water use — toward services and industry with a much
lighter water footprint.
This kind of reform is likely to be painful and costly, both
economically and politically, and highly unlikely under the current
government and given the sanctions imposed on Iran by the US and others,
he said.
Ultimately, the roots of the crisis are not just
environmental or technical but “deeply political and systemic,’
AghaKouchak said. “Iran’s water crisis cannot be separated from its
broader governance crisis.”
For now, the country is waiting for the fall and hoping it will bring rain.
“If Tehran survives until the end of September then there is hope for avoiding day zero,” Madani said.
Footage shows raging flash flood tearing into Indian town of Dharali – video
Agence France-Press in Dehradun
A torrent of mud from a flash flood has smashed into a town in India’s
Himalayan region, tearing down a mountain valley before demolishing
buildings and killing at least four people, with about 100 others
missing.
Videos broadcast on Indian media
showed a terrifying surge of muddy water sweeping away blocks of flats
in the tourist region of Dharali in Uttarakhand state.
Several people could be seen running before being engulfed by the dark waves of debris that uprooted buildings.
The
Indian defence minister, Sanjay Seth, told the Press Trust of India
news agency: “It is a serious situation … We have received information
about four deaths and around 100 people missing. We pray for their
safety.”
The Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said rescue teams had been deployed “on a war footing”.
A
senior local official, Prashant Arya, said four people had been killed,
with other officials saying that the number could rise.
India’s
army said 150 troops had reached the town, helping to rescue about 20
people who had survived the wall of freezing sludge. “A massive mudslide
struck Dharali … triggering a sudden flow of debris and water through
the settlement,” the army said.
Images released by the army, taken from the site after the main torrent had passed, showed a river of slow-moving mud.
A swathe of the town was swamped by deep debris. In places, the mud lapped at the rooftops of houses.
“Search
and rescue efforts are ongoing, with all available resources being
deployed to locate and evacuate any remaining stranded persons,” an army
spokesperson, Suneel Bartwal, said.
The prime
minister, Narendra Modi, expressed his condolences, and said that “no
stone is being left unturned in providing assistance”.
Dhami said the flood was caused by a sudden and intense “cloudburst”, calling the destruction “extremely sad and distressing”.
The
India Meteorological Department issued a red alert warning for the
area, saying it had recorded “extremely heavy” rainfall of about 21cm
(8in) in isolated parts of Uttarakhand.
Deadly
floods and landslides are common during the monsoon season from June to
September, but experts say the climate crisis, coupled with
urbanisation, is increasing their frequency and severity.
The
UN’s World Meteorological Organization said last year that more intense
floods and droughts are a “distress signal” for what is to come as climate breakdown makes the planet’s water cycle ever more unpredictable.
In
a small village in Switzerland's beautiful Loetschental valley,
Matthias Bellwald walks down the main street and is greeted every few
steps by locals who smile or offer a handshake or friendly word.
by Imogen Foulkes Geneva correspondent
Mr Bellwald is a mayor, but this isn't
his village. Two months ago his home, three miles away in Blatten, was
wiped off the map when part of the mountain and glacier collapsed into
the valley.
The village's 300
residents had been evacuated days earlier, after geologists warned that
the mountain was increasingly unstable. But they lost their homes, their
church, their hotels and their farms.
Lukas
Kalbermatten also lost the hotel that had been in his family for three
generations."The feeling of the village, all the small alleys through
the houses, the church, the memories you had when you played there as a
child… all this is gone."
Blatten's residents were evacuated days before the disaster
Today,
he is living in borrowed accommodation in the village of Wiler. Mr
Bellwald has a temporary office there too, where he is supervising the
massive clean-up operation - and the rebuild.
The
good news is, he believes the site can be cleared by 2028, with the
first new houses ready by 2029. But it comes with a hefty pricetag.
Rebuilding Blatten is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps as much as $1 million (USD) per resident.
Voluntary
contributions from the public quickly raised millions of Swiss francs
to help those who had lost their homes. The federal government and the
canton promised financial support too. But some in Switzerland are
asking: is it worth it?
Houses were destroyed after a large part of Blatten was buried under masses of ice, mud, and rock
Though
the disaster shocked Switzerland, some two thirds of the country is
mountainous, and climate scientists warn that the glaciers and the
permafrost – the glue that holds the mountains together – are thawing as
the global temperature increases, making landslides more likely.
Protecting areas will be costly.
Switzerland
spends almost $500m a year on protective structures, but a report
carried out in 2007 for the Swiss parliament suggested real protection
against natural hazards could cost six times that.
Is
that a worthwhile investment? Or should the country - and residents -
really consider the painful option of abandoning some of their villages?
The day the earth shook
The Alps are an integral part of Swiss identity. Each valley, like the Loetschental, has its own culture.
Mr
Kalbermatten used to take pride in showing hotel guests the ancient
wooden houses in Blatten. Sometimes he taught them a few words of
Leetschär, the local dialect.
Losing
Blatten, and the prospect of losing others like it, has made many Swiss
ask themselves how many of those alpine traditions could disappear.
'I'll never forget it. The earth shook.' Fernando Lehner recalls the day of the landslide
Today, Blatten lies under millions of cubic metres of rock, mud, and ice. Above it, the mountain remains unstable.
When
they were first evacuated, Blatten's residents, knowing their houses
had stood there for centuries, believed it was a purely precautionary
measure. They would be home again soon, they thought.
Fernando Lehner, a retired businessman, says no one expected the scale of the disaster. "We
knew there would be a landslide that day… But it was just unbelievable.
I would never have imagined that it would come down so quickly.
"And that explosion, when the glacier and landslide came down into the valley, I'll never forget it. The earth shook."
Landslides are 'more unpredictable'
The
people of Blatten, keen to get their homes back as soon as possible,
don't want to talk about climate change. They point out that the Alps
are always dangerous, and describe the disaster as a once in a
millennium event.
But climate scientists say global warming is making alpine life more risky.
Matthias
Huss, a glaciologist with Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology, as
well as glacier monitoring group Glamos, argues that climate change was a
factor in the Blatten disaster.
"The thawing of permafrost at very high elevation led to the collapse of the summit," he explains.
Glaciologist Matthias Huss argues that climate change was a factor in the Blatten disaster
"This
mountain summit crashed down onto the glacier… and also the glacier
retreat led to the fact that the glacier stabilised the mountain less
efficiently than before. So climate change was involved at every angle."
Geological
changes unrelated to climate change also played a role, he concedes -
but he points out that glaciers and permafrost are key stabilising
factors across the alps.
His team at
Glamos has monitored a record shrinkage of the glaciers over the past
few years. And average alpine temperatures are increasing.
In
the days before the mountain crashed down, Switzerland's zero-degree
threshold – the altitude at which the temperature reaches freezing point
– rose above 5,000 metres, higher than any mountain in the country.
"It
is not the very first time that we're seeing big landslides in the
Alps," says Mr Huss. "I think what should be worrying us is that these
events are becoming more frequent, but also more unpredictable."
Blatten's residents lost their homes, church and farms: living below a mountain, as many Swiss do, looks increasingly precarious
A
study from November 2024 by the Swiss Federal Research Institute, which
reviewed three decades of literature, concurred that climate change was
"rapidly altering high mountain environments, including changing the
frequency, dynamic behavior, location, and magnitude of alpine mass
movements", although quantifying the exact impact of climate change was
"difficult".
More villages, more evacuations
Graubünden
is the largest holiday region in Switzerland, and is popular with
skiers and hikers for its untouched nature, alpine views and pretty
villages.
The Winter Olympics was
hosted here twice - in the upmarket resort of St Moritz - while the town
of Davos hosts world leaders for the World Economic Forum each year.
One village in Graubünden has a different story to tell.
Brienz was evacuated more than two years ago because of signs of dangerous instability in the mountain above.
Its
residents have still not been able to return, and in July heavy rain
across Switzerland led geologists to warn a landslide appeared imminent.
Average alpine temperatures are increasing, say scientists. Meanwhile glaciers are shrinking
Elsewhere
in Switzerland, above the resort of Kandersteg, in the Bernese Oberland
region, a rockface has become unstable, threatening the village. Now
residents have an evacuation plan.
There
too, heavy rain this summer raised the alarm, and some hiking trails up
to Oeschinen Lake, a popular tourist attraction, were closed.
Some disasters have claimed lives. In 2017, a massive rockslide came down close to the village of Bondo, killing eight hikers.
Bondo
has since been rebuilt, and refortified, at a cost of $64 million. As
far back as 2003, the village of Pontresina spent millions on a
protective dam to shore up the thawing permafrost in the mountain above.
Not every alpine village is at risk, but the apparent unpredictability is causing huge concern.
The debate around relocation
Blatten,
like all Swiss mountain villages, was risk mapped and monitored; that's
why its 300 residents were evacuated. Now, questions are being asked
about the future of other villages too.
In
the aftermath of the disaster, there was a huge outpouring of sympathy.
But the possible price tag of rebuilding it also came with doubts.
An
editorial in the influential Neue Zürcher Zeitung questioned
Switzerland's traditional - and constitutional - wealth distribution
model, which takes tax revenue from urban centres like Zurich to support
remote mountain communities.
The
article described Swiss politicians as being "caught in an empathy
trap", adding that "because such incidents are becoming more frequent
due to climate change, they are shaking people's willingness to pay for
the myth of the Alps, which shapes the nation's identity."
It suggested people living in risky areas of the Alps should consider relocation.
Preserving
the alpine villages is expensive. And Neue Zürcher Zeitung was not the
first to question the cost of saving every alpine community, but its
tone angered some.
While three
quarters of Swiss live in urban areas, many have strong family
connections to the mountains. Switzerland may be a wealthy, highly
developed, high-tech country now, but its history is rural, marked by
poverty and harsh living conditions. Famine in the 19th century caused
waves of emigration.
Mr Kalbermatten
explains that the word "heimat" is hugely important in Switzerland.
"Heimat is when you close your eyes and you think about what you did as a
child, the place you lived as a child.
"It's a much bigger word than home."
Ask
a Swiss person living for decades in Zurich or Geneva, or even New
York, where their heimat is, and for many, the answer will be the
village they were born in.
For Mr
Kalbermatten and his sister and brothers, who live in cities, heimat is
the valley where people speak Leetschär, the dialect they all still
dream in.
The
fear is that if these valleys become depopulated, other aspects of
unique mountain culture could be lost too - like the Tschäggättä,
traditional wooden masks, unique to the Loetschental valley.
Their
origins are mysterious, possibly pagan. Every February, local young men
wear them, along with animal skins, and run through the streets.
Mr
Kalbermatten points to the example of some areas of northern Italy
where this loss of culture has happened. "[Now] there are only abandoned
villages, empty houses, and wolves.
"Do we want that?"
Lukas Kalbermatten believes the site can be cleared by 2028, with Blatten's first new houses ready by 2029.
For
many, the answer is no: An opinion poll from research institute,
Sotomo, asked 2,790 people what they most cherished about their country.
The most common answer? Our beautiful alpine landscape, and our
stability.
But the poll did not ask what price they were prepared to pay.
Trying to tame a mountain
Boris
Previsic, the director of the University of Lucerne's Institute for the
Culture of the Alps, says that many Swiss, at least in the cities, had
begun to believe they had tamed the alpine environment.
Switzerland's
railways, tunnels, cable cars and high alpine passes are masterpieces
of engineering, connecting alpine communities. But now, in part because
of climate change, he suggests, that confidence is gone.
"The human induced geology is too strong compared to human beings," he argues.
"In
Switzerland, we thought we could do everything with infrastructure. Now
I think we are at ground zero concerning infrastructure."
Boris Previsic says that many Swiss, at least in the cities, had begun to believe they had tamed the alpine environment
The
village of Blatten had stood for centuries. "When you are in a village
which has existed already for 800 years, you should feel safe. That is
what is so shocking."
In his view, it
is time to fight against these villages dying out. "To fight means we
have to be more prepared," he explains. "But we have to be more
flexible. We have always also to consider evacuation."
At the end of the day, he adds, "you cannot hold back the whole mountain".
In the village of Wiler, Mr Previsic's point is greeted with a weary smile. "The mountain always decides," agrees Mr Bellwald.
"We
know that they are dangerous. We love the mountains, we don't hate them
because of that. Our grandfathers lived with them. Our fathers lived
with them. And our children will also live with them."
Helicopters carry debris from the disaster site at Blatten. Even the military is involved in the operation.
At
lunchtime in the local restaurant in Wiler, the tables are filled with
clean-up teams, engineers and helicopter crew. The Blatten recovery
operation is in full swing.
At one
table, a man from one of Switzerland's biggest insurance companies sits
alone. Every half hour, he is joined by someone, an elderly couple, a
middle aged man, a young woman. He buys each a drink, and carefully
notes down the details of their lost homes.
Outside,
along the valley's winding roads, lorries and bulldozers trundle up to
the disaster site. Overhead, helicopters carry large chunks of debris.
Even the military is involved.
Sebastian
Neuhaus commands the Swiss army's disaster relief readiness battalion,
and says they must press on despite the scale of the task. "We have to,"
he says. "There are 300 life histories buried down there."
The
abiding feeling is one of stubborn determination to carry on. "If we
see someone from Blatten, we hug each other," says Mr Kalbermatten.
"Sometimes we say, 'it's nice, you're still here.' And that's the most important thing, we are all still here."
Lead image: The village of Blatten after the disaster. Credit: EPA / Shutterstock
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