the Blatten Diary

written June.2025

May 19 2025

9.52 am – the phone rings.

«get out of the house, now! »

« huh ?? »

« get out of the house right now and come to the meeting point at 10am »

It was a phone call that should change my life. Our lives. The lives of 300 people and a whole valley.

Looking back now to that day feels strange. I remember not being afraid or worried, just a bit nervous.

I didn’t think much about what I should pack and take with me. It didn’t come to mind that there was a possibility of never being able to return.

I called Ben, who had already gone to the office, told him what happened, took the dog, my backpack and left home.

Arriving at the meeting point it was packed. It seemed everyone was already there. It was quiet, nobody was talking, a whisper here and there.

I sat down, tried to calm the dog down and waited.

The president of the municipality of Blatten stepped up the stage in front, talking on the phone:

“We’re waiting, yes… what shall we do?... … … leave?... … now?… ok”

His eyes moved over all the people in the room, then he said:

“Full evacuation, now!”

Everyone got up, quietly and moving slowly. I got into my car and left to the meeting point in Wiler.

It was a sunny day and slowly getting quite warm. I sat down in the shade, watching people on the forecourt of the gym. My gaze wandered up towards the mountain. It was surrounded by blue skies and fields of green trees. “Typical swissness view”, I thought. I wasn’t worried or uncomfortable. I just didn’t know what to do.

I called my mom to explain what happened. She was on vacation and just out strolling around. We were making up scenarios of some rocks coming down, blocking the river Lonza at the bottom and flooding the village of Blatten. At that point, this was the worst-case scenario we could think of, and we weren’t concerned it could actually happen.

Just three years ago our house had been flooded, we had just finished all repairs and reconditioning. No one had been hurt, it was just material damage and though the clean-up was hard work, it wasn’t severely bad after all.

Suddenly it occurred to me that we would need a place to stay. I called a friend and asked if we could come stay at their vacation home, his short simple answer was “of course!”. I felt relieved. And then I thought “I don’t even have a toothbrush with me! No underwear, socks, nothing!”.

It was afternoon already and Ben and I decided to go for a quick shopping trip in the valley to buy a basic lay-out.

written March 16 .2026

Coming back to Lötschental we drove up the mountain to get up to Lauchernalp, where we would be staying.

It was a very nice apartment with full view over the Lötschental mountains and valley, the Bietschhorn right in front of us (huge thank you to Toni and Carlos from Lauchernalp Resort).

The days moved by, weather turned bad, it got cold, rainy and even snowed a bit.

Nikon Schweiz had sent me a big telephoto lense and binoculars as a loan for me to be able to watch the mountains. I just had one camera with me along with some lenses that were in the backpack I took. But no laptop, chargers, memory cards or external harddrives...

Everything else, my full office, computers, camera gear, clothes and whatever else was still in Blatten and we were not allowed to go back to get some stuff.

So since I wasn’t able to work, I was just sitting by the window or on the balcony observing the crumbling mountain. With every day the rockslides increased, the sound was like a never-ending freight train 24/7.

Sometimes a helicopter flew around the glacier, sometimes the glacier was fully hidden behind clouds of dust from falling rocks.

Those days were lead by complete uncertainty. What was gonna happen? How long would we have to keep sitting here, watching the mountain? When would we be able to go back to Blatten? Would the mountain come down all at once, or just piece by piece over time?

May 28 2025

It was raining heavily up at Lauchernalp. I kept dog walks to a minimum cause it was just so uncomfortable to go outside.

Later in the afternoon though I thought I’d just go out nevertheless, packed myself in a snowjacket my MIL had given me and took off for a walk around the Lauchernalp.

We walked towards Netzbord and the dog was freaking out, jumping and pulling the leash, barking and just all over like out of her mind.

I was frustrated both with weather and dogs behaviour and the longer the dog kept going ballistic the more it brought me close to tears. I decided to sit down under a tree and see if the dog would come down a bit.

The atmosphere felt quite dystopic, heavy rain kept pouring down, all surroundings kind of blurred into one smudge of brownish colors.

I watched pieces of the glacier breaking off and sliding down the hillsides. Meanwhile I was completely soaking wet, so I got up and headed back to our house.

The dogs behaviour increased immeasurably, at this point it was going full on ballistic and I was getting worried something wasn’t ok with her.

I tried my best to navigate thru the narrow trails and get home as fast as possible.

Finally arriving at home, I took off the all wet clothes, put my phone on the table next to the window and looked up.

3.24 pm I didn’t grasp what I was seeing, like remote-controlled I picked the phone up again, opened the door and started filming.

What I saw was the view that went around the world. That big fat brown cloud blasting down the mountain full force. Windows started shaking, I started shaking. What did I just witness??

And then – silence.

I knew what I had just seen but wasn’t capable of processing it. I didn’t know what to do. I was just standing there, shaking.

I texted Ben “I think the glacier just came down” along with a screenshot of the video I had filmed, then I called my MIL, asking if she was ok. She was at the nursing home and said everyone was in tears.

About just one hour later the first photos started to spread. We saw this huge cone of debris that had buried most of Blatten. A bunch of houses were still there but we knew right then already that these houses would get flooded by the river being dammed up.

It was so surreal, I was confused I didn’t feel any emotions, other than still shaking and getting a headache.

TV News started picking up those disastrous headlines. We didn’t know anything except what we saw on TV.

How far/high up would the dammed water rise? Would it swallow all of the remaining houses? Would more rockslides hit the village?

Even though we didn’t know the exact outcome I had the impulse of “I need to do something”. I opened up gofundme and started building a fundraiser.

The first thought simply was to help those who lost the most or just needed money for rent or whatever, the elderly who didn’t have a big income, etc.

written May 24 2026

The next day the fundraiser went live. I posted it on all my social medias and hoped that me lingering around those networks for so many many years finally would pay off and result in something actually helpful.

The beginning was slow, though donations came in surprisingly quickly.

I was still shaking constantly and had a horrible headache that just wouldn’t go away.

The landslide of Blatten now was everywhere, tv, radio, internet, social media. There was no way to get around it anymore. And honestly, I was appalled by how many people tried to get their piece of the attention cake, especially on social media.

Messages and calls came rolling in and had me completely overwhelmed and run over like a bulldozer, I was unable to cope with all those impressions that bombarded me like a hail storm.

May 30 2025

The fundraiser blew off overnight - there was a total of over 40thousand chf donated already. I was shocked and again overwhelmed by this enormous amount of support and solidarity. I still couldn't grasp what was happening, everything seemed so surreal. I felt as if I was wrapped in a cloud. Though still trembling and having a hammering headache, I felt like I was moving around in a bubble of dull cushioning, if that makes any sense. ______________________ to be continued... or not... --> You can find my visual diary on my Instagram @chrissiest, called "the Blatten Chronicle"