Stunning glacier becomes a threat as water pools above town in French Alps

[Judi Lynn]

Stunning glacier becomes a threat as water pools above town in French Alps
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 17, 2010; 10:04 AM

SAINT-GERVAIS, FRANCE -

From time immemorial, the Tete Rousse Glacier has sparkled majestically on the slopes of Aiguille de Bionnassay, an icy symbol of the Alpine heritage that molded the culture and produced the prosperity of this tidy little mountaineering town in the shadow of Mont Blanc.

But the glacier, a 20-acre mass lying within a bowl-shaped rock formation at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, has suddenly turned menacing.

Partly because of global warming, a giant pocket of water has accumulated within the ice, threatening to burst out of its frozen enclosure and send a wall of water, mud, ice and rock down on the chalets of Saint-Gervais spread across the valley below.

"Nature is stronger than we are," explained the mayor of Saint-Gervais, Jean-Marc Peillex, calling on his sometimes skeptical townspeople to heed the threat. "No one can confirm the risk is imminent," he said in an announcement posted around the community, "but nor can anyone confirm that there is no risk."

As soon as experts from the National Scientific Research Center reported with certainty in mid-July that they had detected the water pocket, Peillex, acting on his own advice, set up an alarm system on the glacier, connected to sirens in Saint-Gervais. Many of the town's 5,740 inhabitants, joined by up to 25,000 visitors during summer climbing season, were assigned rallying points on high ground where they could flee if the sirens wailed.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/17/AR2010091702352.html

[ixion]

1. To be fair, when you build a chalet underneath a glacier

that kind of thing is entirely possible.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. To be fair, this is a village 6 miles from that glacier, that has been there hundreds of years

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=%22saint+gervais%22+%22tete+rousse%22+kilometers&ie=UTF8&hq=%22saint+gervais%22+%22tete+rousse%22+kilometers&hnear=&ll=45.871366,6.765518&spn=0.115698,0.220757&z=12