Heavy snow has left up to 13,000 tourists stranded at one of Switzerland’s best-known ski resorts.
Heavy snowfall has cut off many villages and resorts across the Alps, trapping some 13,000 tourists at Zermatt, one of Switzerland’s most popular ski stations, officials said Tuesday.
Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory.Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world.
Zermatt is home to some 5,500 inhabitants and has the capacity to accommodate 13,400 tourists spread across hotels and rental apartments.
Swiss police said in a statement that they were launching “preventative triggering” of smaller avalanches with the aim of opening the resort’s roads on Wednesday.
Local police said the airlift was taking about 100 people an hour who urgently needed to leave Zermatt to the nearby village of Täsch, a three minute flight, from where rail replacement buses were available for their onward journey.
Local weather forecasts point to a reduction in snowfall during Tuesday, with no snow forecast for Wednesday.The Swiss federal institute for forest, snow and landscape research, WSL, warned that fresh snowfall could provoke “numerous spontaneous avalanches of a large, and often very large, scale”.
“Arrivals and departures are to and from Zermatt are not possible at the moment,” the resort said on its website.
A reconnaissance flight is planned over the area to help determine how the situation will progress and when tourists can be evacuated.
