A quarter of a century after the Pissot disaster, thunderstorms, which were more frequent and intense, as well as the melting of permafrost, further encouraged mudslides. How can we avoid them being devastating?
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–During the night of August 13 to 14, 1995, an isolated forty-five minute storm spilled 70,000 m3 of water in the Pissot stream. The torrential lava had devastated everything around, even the A9 motorway. As to recall, the stream experienced a ten-year flood after heavy rains on Monday.
Patrick martin
The event led to the creation of one of the first maps of natural hazards in Switzerland. A quarter of a century ago, in Villeneuve (VD), on the night of August 13 to 14, 1995, the Pissot, doped by a thunderstorm, came out of its bed and carried torrential lava devastating all around (read box). On July 23, six people had to be rescued at the cantonal borders in Jaun (FR) after torrential lava. In recent days, the body of a girl found in Lake Geneva off Cully recalled a similar disaster that occurred in Chamoson (VS) on August 11, 2019. To hear the climatologist Martine Rebetez, professor at the University of Neuchâtel and at the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), the frequency of this type of event is accelerating due to global warming: “When temperatures rise by one degree, the air can contain 7% more humidity and there is more energy in the atmosphere. Extreme precipitation events are more intense and more frequent. However, this one-degree warming corresponds to that which has already occurred in Switzerland for the past twenty-five years. It is twice as fast as the average on the planet. ”
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