A remote village in the Swiss Alps nearly vanished this week after a massive chunk of mountainside gave way, triggering a glacier shift that buried much of the area under ice and debris, according to NPR.

Swiss authorities evacuated roughly 300 residents from the village of Blatten, located in southern Switzerland’s Lötschental valley, just in time. They began pulling people out “when it became clear that there’s a whole mountainside that’s about to collapse,” said Martin Truffer, a physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The collapse occurred above the Birch Glacier, where weakened rock gave out, sending debris plummeting onto the ice below. The sudden weight disrupted the glacier’s stability, setting it in motion—a phenomenon scientists say we’ll likely see more of as the climate continues to warm.

While it may sound like a freak accident, experts are clear: this is what climate change looks like. Glaciers in the Alps have already lost about 50 percent of their volume since 1950, and the rate of loss is accelerating.

There are currently “projections … that all the glaciers in the Alps could be gone in this century,” Lonnie Thompson, a glacier expert at the Ohio State University, said.

“It’s amazing sometimes how rapidly they can collapse,” Thompson remarked. “The instability of these glaciers is a real and growing problem, and there are thousands and thousands of people that are at risk.”

The root cause is heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. Global temperature rises are hitting alpine regions especially hard. According to The Guardian, Switzerland alone lost six percent of its total glacier volume in 2022—the worst year on record—followed by a four percent loss in 2023.

Switzerland now stands on the front lines of glacial collapse, but the consequences aren’t just local. Shrinking glaciers fuel rising sea levels, disrupt water supplies for millions, and increase the risk of deadly floods and landslides.

As Eurasia Review reports, enacting strong emissions-reduction policies could help save nearly half of the world’s remaining glaciers.

In the meantime, scientists warn that glacier instability is no longer just a future threat—it’s a present danger. And this Swiss disaster is a sign of what’s to come if warming continues unchecked.