03:46

Ruth Deutschmann

Benamin Epp

2008-08-22

Sylvia Manning-Baumgartner

Nicole D´Incecco

1999

If I am to explain it properly I have to go outsideto show you the area where the catastrophic avalanchecame down. The winter of 1999 was unusual meteorologically speaking. Within one month – between the end of January and the end of February – in three and a half weeks, three large storm fronts moved in from the Atlantic to the Alps. They came from the northwest and each brought abnormally large amounts of snow. We know where the avalanche usually comes down from before, but it never was that big. About 200 altimeters below the place where the avalanche breaks, there's a trench running east to west. Until 1999 we thought it was sufficient to protect us from the avalanche. That year the first avalanche came down after the first big snowfall and got stuck in the trench. When the second big snowfall occurred a week later – each time it snowed about two metres - when the second big snowfall came it was slightly warmer. That means that the snow was wetter and a bit warmer and just stuck to the mountain. The third big snowfall happened at a lower temperature and then the snow from the second and the third formed the avalanche that came down. It just swept over the filled up trench like over a ski jump. That's the technical explanation of what happened. At first we called it a 'once in a century' event. But in fact it could happen every year. Such weather phenomena could occur every year. But we got wise: either we don't ever build in the endangered zones anymore or there need to be large protective walls. That's what we built. The part of the village that was most affected in 1999 is now protected by a wall - 380 metres long and 16 or 17 metres high. Such events are easier to – how should I say? – to predict than they used to be. Today there are measuring devices up there. So after a big snow fall we can monitor the weather,the amount of precipitation, the wind direction, the temperature and so on, every second. That way we can predict changes much more efficiently than we used to.