Swiss Review 1/2021

Swiss Review / February 2021 / No.1 10 Report JÜRG STEINER The chalet-style houses bask serenely in the winter sun that illuminates a narrow valley floor flanked by steep mountains on both sides. Mitholz, a village with 200 inhabitants, is situ- ated on a level stretch of the Kander Valley. It has one remaining restau- rant, but its last local shop closed for good a long time ago. Winding their way through Mitholz are the railway line and the road leading to the Lötschberg tunnel car train that takes passengers to Val- ais. This Alpine village is no stranger to natural perils such as rockslides, landslides, floods and avalanches. “We are used to natural hazards,” says Ro- man Lanz, mayor of the Kandergrund municipality that encompasses Mitholz. “We have never seen themas a reason to move away.” But isMitholz too dangerous for its residents? This question suddenly arose two years ago. And the matter was deadly serious. The reason is that located deep in the cliffs overlooking the village thousands of tonnes of live munitions – including 50-kilo aircraft bombs – remain in a partially col- lapsed Second World War weapons depot. Tragedy hit Mitholz in 1947, when three violent explosions occurred in the depot one night just before Christ- mas, not long after the underground facility had been built. Debris rained from the sky, asmunitions, mountain rocks and pressurised air blasted out of the entrances to the depot, destroy- ing much of the village. Nine people died in one of the biggest accidents in Swiss army history. The villagers returned to their houses just one year later, although the cause of the explosions remains unclear to this day, as journalist Hans Rudolf Schneider explains in his book “Die Schreckensnacht von Mitholz” (Hor- ror in Mitholz). Despite this, the au- thorities announced in the 1940s that the damaged depot, in which around half of the original 7,000 tonnes of munitions still lie buried, no longer presented a danger to the local popu- lation. This view changed when army commanders began toying with the idea of building a secret data centre in the underground facility. A new re- port in summer 2018 said that the risk to roads, housing, rail infrastructure, and, by extension, to people was now “unacceptable”. Mitholz suddenly be- came Switzerland’s most explosive village. According to the Kandergrund mayor, Roman Lanz, the village was plunged into a state of paralysis after hearing the news in June 2018. It took another one and a half years for Fed- eral Councillor Viola Amherd to an- nounce that the only way to nullify the danger was to clear the ammuni- tion. She said it would be a highly The most explosive place in Switzerland For over 70 years, Mitholz in the Bernese Oberland has been home to a mountain bunker containing thousands of tonnes of live ammunition dating back to the Second World War. Now the bombshell: the armoury needs to be cleared and the village residents evacuated. Will Mitholz become a ghost town? Debris in the village after the 1947 explo- sions – nine people died and many houses were destroyed. Archive photo: Keystone, 1947 Higher, further, faster, more beautiful? In search of the some- what different Swiss records. This edition: A visit to the most explosive place in Switzerland. e tremes Swiss