It’s 5 p.m. The lakeshore road in Ascona is very busy. Then it suddenly happens: Behind the district of Moscia, five cubic meters of rock detach from the slope, partly crashing onto the road, partly into a garden. That no one was harmed on August 14th borders on a miracle.
A distance of 1.2 kilometers is immediately blocked and traffic is diverted. At the weekend, traffic jams build up for miles. Traffic chaos prevails on Lake Maggiore for a whole week until the road is free again.
Another ten cubic meters of rock threatened to fall
The men at the termination point are stressed. It’s not just about clearing the road. There are still ten cubic meters of rock above it. You threaten to fall. “We couldn’t get hold of it with large equipment,” says canton geologist Andrea Pedrazzini (38), “the men on the slope had to split the chunks with jackhammers.”
Again and again, landslides and rockfalls force border traffic on the west bank of the lake to its knees. 8000 commuters use the Riviera every day. There are also thousands of tourists. The lakeshore road on the Italian side from Ghiffa to Brissago TI has been spilled nine times in the past twelve years. Rockfall threatens in 14 places. The mountain slipped six times on the Swiss side. Commuters and tourists were sometimes only transported by ship.
Record rain twice in a week
The fact that the slopes are crumbling has to do with climate change. “The rocks are cracked. Water penetrates the crevices and the stone can burst, “explains Andrea Pedrazzini,” as heavy rainfalls as the storms in summer actually only occur every 50 years. But we had two of them in just one week. “
The wild vegetation also destabilizes the slope. “Exotic trees grow up there that don’t really belong in our flora. When there is a storm, their crowns swing and lift the roots out of the ground. They then pull the loose rock with them. ” The on-call service is on the alert and well networked. The maintenance of the slopes must also be increased, said Pedrazzini. Ticino is now planning to build a tunnel that bypasses the district of Moscia.