How we deal with avalanches

Hello there
Some days ago I saw a wonderful Switzerland-post on Imgur (https://imgur.com/account/favorites/73NqKaJ). An interesting question was asked in the comments.

“How do avalanches not obliterate everything in Switzerland?”

Actually I wanted to answer the question but realised quickly that there is no short answer. So, I thought why not bring some lesser known facts to the Imgur community.

Avalanches were (and still are) a threat to people living in the mountains. Especially in the past a lot of people died and villages where buried underneath the snow. For example, in the year 1951, 91 people died in Switzerland because of the avalanches. We learned a lot from these past tragedies and today we have different ways to protect people and infrastructure from avalanches.

First of all, Switzerland is not exclusively covered in mountains. Roughly 60% of the country lies within the Alps, a region with high mountains (highest mountain in Switzerland is the Dom, 4545 m.a.S.). However the majority of the population lives not in the mountains but in the part of Switzerland that we call flatland (it is not flat but covered with hills). You can see where the people live in the next picture.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that although we have a lot of mountains there are not that many people living in this area. So not a lot of people are in danger because of the snow and avalanches couldn’t obliterate everything.
But of course, there are people living in the dangerous zones and in winter there are normally also many tourists. Like I mentioned before, we have different ways to protect the people.

1. Avalanche barriers
Those barriers cover the top of some mountains and hold the snow back. They are usually placed in areas where a lot of people live or close to skiing slopes.

2. Protection forest
In the past a lot of the forests were cut down and consequently the villages were exposed to avalanches. After people realised that forests used to protect them from avalanches they started to regrow these forests.

3. Avalanche monitoring and safety detonations
The amount of snow and the level of danger is very closely monitored. We hear the level of avalanche danger in the news or on the radio. They also trigger avalanches on purpose before the amount of snow is too big. Yep, they bomb the snow to create avalanches.

4. Safety constructions
Some roads have a tunnel or gallery above them to hold of stones and avalanches. In the past it took the people days to clean the streets from the snow after an avalanche because they could only work with shovels.

5. The wall!
In some very danger places they even build walls around houses, power masts or other important buildings to protect them. The idea is that the avalanche will flow around the wall and whatever is behind it won't get destroyed.

Similar to the wall idea, this house is protected by a hill that is built with the house, so the avalanche would pass over it.

Despite all these precautions now and then we have an avalanche that reaches a village and just this week a restaurant was hit. Thankfully no one was injured.

It is also a problem when streets are buried under the snow. Last year the street and train tracks to the village of Zermatt were buried under avalanches. You could only reach it by helicopter. 9’000 tourists were stuck in Zermatt and couldn’t leave the village (in emergencies people were flown out by helicopters). Right now, they have the same problem in some regions of Austria because they got 2 meters of snow.

You can see that avalanches can still be dangerous for people living in the mountains but we won’t be obliterated by them and learned to live with it. I hope you liked reading my post.
Have a nice day and enjoy the snow. ?

Sources:
https://www.slf.ch/en/avalanches/avalanche-protection.html
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographie_der_Schweiz
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweiz
https://www.srf.ch/kultur/wissen/kulturerbe-lawinenschutz-schweizer-lawinenschutz-wird-unesco-weltkulturerbe
https://www.srf.ch/news/regional/ostschweiz/zeugen-der-schwaegalp-lawine-wir-wussten-nicht-ob-jetzt-der-tod-kommt
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/schnee-in-den-alpen-zermatt-und-davos-versinken-im-schnee/20874636.html