Little is known about possible damage in the village. According to a message from the municipality on Twitter, the rocks have missed the village by a hair. More will have to become clear about this in daylight.
The village was sealed off from the outside world around midnight. The access roads from Tiefencastel to Surava and to Lenzerheide were closed and the railway was also closed. The speed at which the earth is shifting has gone ten times since Thursday morning, the municipality said on Twitter. A crisis team followed developments throughout the night.
Brienz is located in the southeast of the Swiss Alps. Last month, ‘phase red’ was declared and the village with 84 inhabitants was evacuated because about a quarter of the total of two million cubic meters of rock threatened to come down. Geologists warned then that the rock movement has accelerated. Part of the rock wall slips 32 meters every year. Phase blue means that a landslide could occur within 24 hours.
How the rocks will slide is not yet clear. They can come down gradually or it can go fast and destroy Brienz completely.
On Friday, the cyclists in the Tour of Switzerland will drive through the region, there may be consequences due to the road closures, the Swiss newspaper writes Le Temps.