Dozens evacuated from Austrian village after mudslide covers parts of Alpine valley

VIENNA (AP) – Dozens of people were being evacuated by helicopter in Austria on Tuesday after a mudslide covered homes and mountain huts in the Gschnitztal valley in Tyrol in the southwest of the Alpine country.

The Austrian Armed Forces used a Black Hawk helicopter to fly out around 100 people from the village of Gschnitz and three mountain huts higher up. Severe thunderstorms on Monday set off a mudslide, leaving homes covered with water and debris. Roads leading to the homes were no longer accessible.

The Bremerhütte, Innsbruckerhütte and Tribulaunhütte mountain huts were also no longer accessible via hiking trails due to the landslides, Elmar Rizzoli, head of Tyrol’s Center for Crisis and Disaster Management, told Austria’s public broadcaster ORF.

Local fire department commander Lukas Braunhofer told ORF that after one of several mudslides hit the village of Gschnitz around 6 p.m. on Monday, the Gschnitzbach creek also burst its banks, leading to flooding in the area.

Braunhofer said the mudslides did not appear to have injured anybody, but caused a great deal of damage. Among other things, an open-air museum with a focus on watermills was devastated.

While awaiting their evacuation, residents were asked to stay indoors, not to enter underground garages and basements and also to stay away from the dams on creeks.

“We are monitoring the situation closely and are in constant contact with the emergency organizations,” Rizzoli said.

In May, about 300 people had to be evacuated from the Alpine village of Blatten in neighboring Switzerland just days before a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down a mountainside, sending plumes of dust skyward and coating nearly all of Blatten with mud.