LANDSLIPS IN THE MOUNTAINS
"Sir W. Martin Conway has been good enough to allow me to extract from
_The Alps from End to End_ the following account of the destruction of
Elm. Mountain falls have a special interest for all who travel in
Switzerland, where the remains of so many are visible.
"The Himalayas are, from a geological point of view, a young set of
mountain ranges; they still tumble about on an embarrassingly large
scale. The fall, which recently made such a stir, began on 6th September
1893. That day the Maithana Hill (11,000 feet), a spur of a large
mountain mass, pitched bodily rather than slid, into the valley.
"'Little could be seen of the terrible occurrence, for clouds of dust
instantly arose, which darkened the neighbourhood and fell for miles
around, whitening the ground and the trees until all seemed to be snow
covered. The foot of the hill had been undermined by springs until there
was no longer an adequate base, and in the twinkling of an eye a large
part of the mountain slid down, pushed forward, and shot across the
valley, presenting to the little river a lofty and impervious wall,
against which its waters afterwards gathered. Masses of rocks were
hurled a mile away, and knocked down trees on the slopes across the
valley. Many blocks of dolomitic limestone, weighing from 30 to 50 tons,
were sent like cannon-shots through the air. The noise was terrific, and
the frightened natives heard the din repeated at intervals for several
days, for the first catastrophe was succeeded by a number of smaller
slides. Even five months after the mountain gave way, every rainy day
was succeeded by falls of rocks. A careful computation gives the weight
of the enormous pile of rubbish at 800,000,000 tons.'
"The Himalayas are indeed passing through their dramatic geological
period, when they give rise to such landslips as this at relatively
frequent intervals. Plenty of landslips quite as big have been recorded
in the last half-century, and, amongst the remote and uninhabited
regions of the great ranges, numbers more of which no record is made
constantly happen. The catastrophic period has ended for the Alps.
Landslips on a great scale seldom occur there now; when they do occur,
the cause of them is oftener the activity of man than of natural forces.
But of a great landslip in the Alps details are sure to be observed, and
we are enabled to form a picture of the occurrence. When the Alps
tremble the nations quake; the Himalayas may shudder in their solitudes,
but the busy occidental world pays scant attention, unless gathering
waters threaten to spread ruin afar. Of the Gohna Lake we have been told
much, but little of the fall that caused it. Eye-witnesses appear not to
have been articulate. We can, however, form some idea of what it was
like from the minute and accurate account we possess of a great and
famous Alpine landslip. I refer to that which buried part of the village
of Elm, in Canton Glarus, on 11th September 1881.[13]
"Elm is the highest village in the Sernf Valley. Its position is fixed
by the proximity of a meadow-flat of considerable extent. Above this
three minor valleys radiate, two of which are separated from one another
by a mountain mass, whose last buttress was the Plattenbergkopf, a hill
with a precipitous side and a flat and wooded summit, which used to face
the traveller coming up the main valley. It was this hill that fell.
"The cause of the fall was simple, and reflects little credit on Swiss
communal government. About half-way up the hill there dips into it a bed
of fine slate, excellent for school-slates. In the year 1868 concessions
were given by the commune for working this slate for ten years without
any stipulation as to the method to be employed. Immense masses of the
rock were removed. A hole was made 180 mètres wide, and no supports were
left for the roof. It was pushed into the mountain to a depth of 65
mètres! In 1878, when the concessions lapsed, the commune, by a small
majority, decided to work the quarry itself. Every burgher considered
that he had a right to work in the quarry when the weather was
unsuitable for farm labour. The place was therefore overcrowded on wet
days, and burdened with unskilful hands. The quarry, of course, did not
pay, and became a charge on the rates, but between eighty and one
hundred men drew wages from it intermittently.
"The roof by degrees became visibly rotten. Lumps of rock used to fall
from it, and many fatal accidents occurred. The mass of the mountain
above the quarry showed a tendency to grow unstable, yet blasting went
forward merrily, and no precautions were taken. Cracks opened overhead
in all directions; water and earth used to ooze down through them.
Fifteen hundred feet higher up, above the top of the Plattenbergkopf,
the ground began to be rifted. In 1876 a large crack split the rock
across above the quarry roof, and four years later the mass thus
outlined fell away. In 1879 serious signs were detected of coming ruin
on a large scale. A great crack split the mountain across behind the
top of the hill. The existence of this crack was well known to the
villagers, who had a special name for it. It steadily lengthened and
widened. By August 1881 it was over four mètres wide, and swallowed up
all the surface drainage. Every one seems then to have agreed that the
mountain would ultimately fall, but no one was anxious. The last part of
August and the first days of September were very wet. On 7th September
masses of rock began to fall from the hill; more fell on the 8th, and
strange sounds were heard in the body of the rock; work was at last
suspended in the quarry. On the 10th a commission of incompetent people
investigated the hill, and pronounced that there was no immediate
danger. They, however, ordered that work should cease in the quarry till
the following spring, whereat the workmen murmured. All through the 10th
and the morning of the 11th falls of rock occurred every quarter of an
hour or so. Some were large. They kept coming from new places. The
mountain groaned and rumbled incessantly, and there was no longer any
doubt that it was rotten through and through.
"The 11th of September was a wet Sunday. Rocks and rock-masses kept
falling from the Plattenberg. The boys of the village were all agog with
excitement, and could hardly be prevented by their parents from going
too near the hill. In the afternoon a number of men gathered at an inn
in the upper village, just at the foot of the labouring rocks, to watch
the falls. They called to Meinrad Rhyner, as he passed, carrying a
cheese from an alp, to join them, but he refused, 'not fearing for
himself, but for the cheese.' Another group of persons assembled in a
relative's house to celebrate a christening. A few houses immediately
below the quarry were emptied, but the people from them did not move
far. At four o'clock Schoolmaster Wyss was standing at his window, watch
in hand, registering the falls and the time of their occurrence.
Huntsman Elmer was on his doorstep looking at the quarry through a
telescope. Every one was more or less on the _qui vive_, but none
foresaw danger to himself.
"Many of the people in the lower village, called Müsli, which was the
best part of a mile distant from the quarry, and separated from it by a
large flat area, were quite uninterested. They were making coffee,
milking cows, and doing the like small domestic business.
"Suddenly, at a quarter past five, a mass of the mountain broke away
from the Plattenbergkopf. The ground bent and broke up, the trees upon
it nodded, and folded together, and the rock engulfed them in its bosom
as it crashed down over the quarry, shot across the streams, dashing
their water in the air, and spread itself out upon the flat. A
greyish-black cloud hovered for a while over the ruin, and slowly passed
away. No one was killed by this fall, though the _débris_ reached within
a dozen yards of the inn where the sightseers were gathered. The
inhabitants of the upper village now began to be a little frightened.
They made preparations for moving the aged and sick persons, and some of
their effects. People also came up from the lower villages to help, and
to see the extent of the calamity. Others came together to talk, and the
visitors who had quitted the inn returned to it. Some went into their
houses to shut the windows and keep out the dust. No one was in any
hurry.
"This first fall came from the east side of the Plattenbergkopf;
seventeen minutes later a second and larger fall descended from the west
side. The gashes made by the two united below the peak, and left its
enormous mass isolated and without support. The second fall must have
been of a startling character, for Schoolmaster Wyss forgot his watch
after it. It overwhelmed the inn and four other houses, killed a score
of persons, and drove terror into all beholders, so that they started
running up the opposite hill. Oswald Kubli, one of the last to leave the
inn, saw this fall from close at hand. He was standing outside the inn
when he heard some one cry out: 'My God, here comes the whole thing
down!' Every one fled, most making for the Düniberg. 'I made four or
five strides, and then a stone struck Geiger and he fell without a word.
Pieces from the ruined inn flew over my head. My brother Jacob was
knocked down by them.' Again a dark cloud of dust enveloped the ruin. As
it cleared off, Huntsman Elmer could see, through his glass, the people
racing up the hill (the Düniberg) 'like a herd of terrified chamois.'
When they had reached a certain height most of them stood still and
looked back. Some halted to help their friends, others to take breath.
"'Of those who were before me,' relates Meinrad Rhyner, 'some were for
turning back to the valley to render help, but I called to them to fly.
Heinrich Elmer was carrying boxes, and was only twenty paces behind me
when he was killed. There were also an old man and woman, who were
helping along their brother, eighty years old; they might have been
saved if they had left him. I ran by them, and urged them to hasten.'
"Of all who took refuge on the Düniberg, only six escaped destruction by
the third fall, and they held on their way, and went empty-handed. Ruin
overtook the kind and the covetous together.
"At this time, before the third fall, fear came also upon the cattle. A
cow, grazing far down the valley, bellowed aloud and started running for
the hillside with tail out-straightened. She reached a place of safety
before her meadow was overwhelmed. Cats and chickens likewise saved
themselves, and two goats sought and found salvation on the steps of the
parsonage.
"During the four minutes that followed the second fall every one seems
to have been running about, with a tendency, as the moments passed, to
conclude that the worst was over. Then those who were watching the
mountain from a distance beheld the whole upper portion of the
Plattenbergkopf, 10,000,000 cubic mètres of rock, suddenly shoot from
the hillside. The forest upon it bent 'like a field of corn in the
wind,' before being swallowed up. 'The trees became mingled together
like a flock of sheep.' The hillside was all in movement, and 'all its
parts were playing together.' The mass slid, or rather shot down, with
extraordinary velocity, till its foot reached the quarry. Then the upper
part pitched forward horizontally, straight across the valley and on to
the Düniberg. People in suitable positions could at this moment clearly
see through beneath it to the hillside beyond. They also saw the people
in the upper village, and on the Düniberg, racing about wildly. No
individual masses of rock could be seen in the avalanche, except from
near at hand; it was a dense cloud of stone, sharply outlined below,
rounded above. The falling mass looked so vast that Schoolmaster Wyss
thought it was going to fill up the whole valley. A cloud of dust
accompanied it, and a great wind was flung before it. This wind swept
across the valley and overthrew the houses in its path 'like haycocks.'
The roofs were lifted first, and carried far, then the wooden portions
of the houses were borne bodily through the air, 'just as an autumn
storm first drives off the leaves and then the dead branches themselves
from the trees.' In many cases wooden ruins were dropped from the air on
to the top of the stone _débris_ when the fall was at an end.
Eye-witnesses say that trees were blown about 'like matches,' that
houses were 'lifted through the air like feathers,' and 'thrown like
cards against the hillside,' 'that they bent, trembled, and then broke
up like little toys' before the avalanche came to them. Hay, furniture,
and the bodies of men were mixed with the house-ruins in the air. Some
persons were cast down by the blast and raised again. Others were
carried through the air and deposited in safe positions; others, again,
were hurled upward to destruction and dropped in a shattered state as
much as a hundred mètres away. Huntsman Elmer relates as follows:
"'My son Peter was in Müsli (nearly a mile from the quarry) with his
wife and child. He sought to escape with them by running. On coming to a
wall, he took the child from his wife and leaped over. Turning round, he
saw the woman reach out her hand to another child. At that moment the
wind lifted him, and he was borne up the hillside. My married daughter,
also in Müsli, fled with two children. She held the younger in her arms
and led the other. This one was snatched away from her, but she found
herself, not knowing how, some distance up the hillside, lying on the
ground face downwards, with the baby beneath her, both uninjured.'
"The avalanche, as has been said, shot with incredible swiftness
horizontally across the valley. It pitched on to the Düniberg, struck it
obliquely, and was thus deflected down the level and fertile
valley-floor, which it covered in a few seconds, to the distance of
nearly a mile and over its whole width, with a mass of rock _débris_
more than 30 feet thick. Most of the people on the hillside were
instantly killed, the avalanche falling on to them and crushing them
flat, 'as an insect is crushed into a red streak under a man's foot.'
Only six persons here escaped. Two of them were almost reached by the
rocks, the others were whirled aloft through the air and deposited in
different directions. One survivor describes how the dust-cloud overtook
him, 'and came between him and his breath!' He sank face downwards on
the ground, feeling powerless to go further. Looking back, he saw
'stones flying above the dust-cloud. In a moment all seemed to be over.
I stood up and climbed a few yards to a spring of water to wash out the
dust, which filled my mouth and nose' (all survivors on the Düniberg had
the same experience). 'All round was dark and buried in dust.'
"It was only when the avalanche had struck the Düniberg and began to
turn aside from it--the work of a second or two--that the people in the
lower village, far down along the level plain, had any suspicion that
they were in danger. Twenty seconds later all was over. Some of them who
were on a bridge had just time to run aside, not a hundred yards, and
were saved, but most were killed where they stood. The avalanche swept
away half the village. Its sharply defined edge cut one house in two.
All within the edge were destroyed, all without were saved. Almost the
only persons wounded were those in the bisected house. Huntsman Elmer
with his telescope, and Schoolmaster Wyss with his watch, whose houses
were just beyond the area of ruin, beheld the dust-cloud come rolling
along, 'like smoke from a cannon's mouth, but black,' filling the whole
width of the flat valley to about twice the height of a house. The din
seemed to them not very great, and the wind, which, in front of the
cloud, carried the houses away like matchwood, did not reach them.
Others describe the crash and thunder of the fall as terrific; it
affected people differently. All agree that it swallowed up every other
sound, so that shrieks of persons near at hand were inaudible. The mass
seemed to slide or shoot along the ground rather than to roll. One or
two men had a race for life and won it, but most failed to escape who
were not already in a place of safety. Fridolin Rhyner, an
eleven-year-old boy, kept his head better than any one else in the
village, and succeeded in eluding the fall. He saw, too, 'how Kaspar
Zentner reached the bridge as the fall took place, and how he started
running as fast as he could, but was caught by the flood of rocks near
Rhyner's house; he jumped aside, however, into a field, limped across
it, got over the wall into the road, and so just escaped.'
"The last phase of the catastrophe is the hardest to imagine, and was
the most difficult to foresee. The actual facts are these. Ten million
cubic mètres of rock fell down a depth (on an average) of about 450
mètres, shot across the valley and up the opposite (Düniberg) slope to a
height of 100 mètres, where they were bent 25° out of their first
direction, and poured, almost like a liquid, over a horizontal plane,
covering it, uniformly, throughout a distance of 1500 mètres and over an
area of about 900,000 square mètres to a depth of from 10 to 20 mètres.
The internal friction of the mass and the friction between it and the
ground were insignificant forces compared with the tremendous momentum
that was generated by the fall. The stuff flowed like a liquid. No
wonder the parson, seeing the dust-cloud rolling down the valley,
thought it was only dust that went so far. His horror, when the cloud
cleared off and he beheld the solid grey carpet, beneath which one
hundred and fifteen of his flock were buried with their houses and their
fields, may be imagined. He turned his eyes to the hills, and lo! the
familiar Plattenbergkopf had vanished and a hole was in its place.
"The roar of the fall ceased suddenly. Silence and stillness supervened.
Survivors stood stunned where they were. Nothing moved. Then a great cry
and wailing arose in the part of the village that was left. People began
to run wildly about, some down the valley, some up. As the dust-cloud
grew thinner the wall-like side of the ruin appeared. It was quite dry.
All the grass and trees in the neighbourhood were white with dust. Those
who beheld the catastrophe from a distance hurried down to look for
their friends. Amongst them was Burkhard Rhyner, whose house was
untouched at the edge of the _débris_. He ran to it and found, he said,
'the doors open, a fire burning in the kitchen, the table laid, and
coffee hot in the coffee-pot, but no living soul was left.' All had run
forth to help or see, and been overwhelmed--wife, daughter, son, son's
wife, and two grandchildren. 'I am the sole survivor of my family.' Few
were the wounded requiring succour; few the dead whose bodies could be
recovered. Here and there lay a limb or a trunk. On the top of one of
the highest _débris_ mounds was a head severed from its body, but
otherwise uninjured. Every dead face that was not destroyed wore a look
of utmost terror. The crushed remains of a youth still guarded with
fragmentary arms the body of a little child. There were horrors enough
for the survivors to endure. The memory of them is fresh in their minds
to the present day.
"Such was the great catastrophe of Elm. The hollow in the hills, whence
the avalanche fell, can still be seen, and the pile of ruin against and
below the Düniberg; but almost all the rest of the _débris_-covered area
has been reclaimed and now carries fields, which were ripening to
harvest when I saw them. The fallen rocks, some big as houses, have been
blasted level; soil has been carried from afar and spread over the ruin.
A channel, 40 feet deep or more, has been cut through it for the river,
so that the structure of the rock-blanket can still be seen. The roots
of young trees now grasp stones that took part in that appalling flight
from their old bed of thousands of years to their present place of
repose. The valley has its harvests again, and the villagers go about
their work as their forefathers did, but they remember the day of their
visitation, and to the stranger coming amongst them they tell the tragic
tale with tears in their eyes and white horror upon their faces."