The residents of Brienz, Switzerland, breathed a sigh of relief this week as a massive rock slide they feared would destroy their village missed it by just a few metres.
The picturesque mountainside community has been evacuated since May 12, as residents waited anxiously for the rock slide that geologists warned was imminent.
But when an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million cubic metres of rock finally broke away overnight Thursday and tumbled down the mountainside, it stopped just at the edge of the local school house, leaving the village unscathed.
“The village was incredibly lucky,” municipal spokesperson Christian Gartmann told As It Happens
