The Unpredictable Ice

High in the Swiss Alps, near the little village of Saas-Almagell, engineers and workmen have labored for five years on the Mattmark dam. To visitors, the site of the work camp looked dangerous, for above it rose a sheer mountain wall, topped by the icy lip of the six-mile-long Allalin glacier. But the workmen on the dam were assured it was by no means as menacing as it looked.

Glaciers move only inches a year and, besides, on orders of the Swiss government, Geologist Auguste Lombard last year examined Allalin and reported that the great ice sheet was retracting, not expanding.

Churned Earth. Early last week a Dutch engineer named Egbert Roosma took a stroll on the outskirts of the camp. The late afternoon sun glistened on the bright yellow barracks, repair shops and tool sheds. There was a constant roar from bulldozers and heavy-duty trucks churning up the slate-grey earth as they carried dirt and rocks to the growing wall. Roosma, 25, had reason for satisfaction: the Mattmark project would be completed by October, and its turbines were already generating electricity. He had got on well with his Swiss employers and with the hundreds of workers on the project--mostly Italian.

It was nearly 5 o'clock. Technician Oskar Anthamatten worked on the balky engine of a bulldozer. In the canteen a dozen men drank beer and munched sandwiches. Some 50 others were still in the barracks, resting up for the night shift. Suddenly there was a dull groan from the sky. Glancing up, Roosma saw a long chunk of the curling lip of the glacier break off and begin to slide down the cliff, slowly at first and then in a quickening whirl of ice and rock and snow.

Anthamatten looked up from his bulldozer, and later reported, "the mountain came down toward us. I ran, but not for long. A giant wind blew me down. I kept crawling on my hands and knees. I was engulfed by ice; it covered me to my chin. I was caught by the very tip of the slide. I could hardly breathe, but I yelled. Some Italians came and pulled me out. The others ran in different directions. They were never seen again."

Alpine Silence. In twenty seconds the work camp was buried a hundred feet beneath a blanket of ice. No sound came from the injured or trapped. There was only the Alpine silence, broken by the rippling of the Viege River. The dam itself was untouched. Next day, Swiss soldiers and rescue workers clawed at the mass in a drenching rain, once interrupting the search to run for their lives when word came that cracks in another large section of the glacier threatened to dump more ice onto the valley floor. Groaned one engineer: "This is like chipping away at the Rock of Gibraltar. It will take months, perhaps years."

Project officials reported seven confirmed dead and 83 missing, and they feared there would be no other survivors. Said one worker who had luckily escaped: "The poor devils never had a chance. Those not killed outright must have frozen to death in a matter of hours." At a news conference in Geneva, Geologist Lombard said that the disaster had been "completely unpredictable."

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