The decision will ultimately rest with the canton of Graubünden. During a press conference organized on Saturday, November 9 in Tiefencastel, Daniel Albertin, the mayor of the municipality of Albula, announced that the decision for a preventive evacuation of the village of Brienz belongs to the canton of Graubünden. A consultation is expected to take place on Tuesday, November 12.
Residents may have to be evacuated in the coming days. “Prepare yourself now,” Pascal Porchet, director of the Cantonal Office of Military Affairs, told them on Saturday evening during an emergency meeting in Tiefencastel (GR). Residents are asked, if necessary, to take “anything that cannot be replaced with money”. The evacuation could last several months.
Rapid movement of the upper part of the scree
The same morning, the municipality of Albula announced that it was preparing a preventive evacuation of Brienz, after observing that the sliding of the upper part of the scree had greatly accelerated. Measurements from the early warning service showed that the upper part of the scree had been moving at a rate sometimes exceeding 30 centimeters per day since the second half of September.
The combination of three factors can trigger the landslide, said an expert in geology and natural hazards: intense precipitation, falling rocks on the landslide, as well as the refinement of the material over time. Up to 1.2 million m3 of rock could move towards the village.
One million cubic meters of rock fell in 2023
The last evacuation of Brienz dates back to May 12, 2023: up to two million cubic meters of rock threatened to collapse from the mountain slope above the village, the equivalent of 2,000 individual houses. On the night of June 16, 2023, 1.2 million cubic meters of rock broke away in the form of a huge flow, which stopped just before the village. At the beginning of July 2023, the residents of Brienz were able to return to their homes.
In mid-March 2024, a few thousand cubic meters of rock broke away again above the town, without affecting the village. The plateau, a stratum of land of 5 million m3 overlooking the village, sliding towards the valley at a rate of 4.3 meters per year, new cracks have formed. Parts of the wall came off. In May this year, heavy rainfall caused an increase in rockfall from this slide. But the village was spared.
