The destruction of the village served as a stark reminder to residents that dramatic collapses are becoming more frequent in the Swiss Alps. Some experts are now daring to raise the possibility that,

There are strong theories on the causes, and to what degree it is linked to climate change — but these are yet to be confirmed by scientific analysis.

Aerial footage showed flooded homes and debris scattered around a Swiss village after a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier crashed down a mountainside in the southern Lötschental valley. The landslide on Wednesday sent plumes of dust skyward and coated with mud nearly all of an Alpine village that authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution.