Swiss Army ends clean-up operation in storm-hit Maggia Valley
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Swiss Army ends clean-up operation in storm-hit Maggia Valley
The Swiss Armed Forces completed 76 flight hours during the clean-up operation following the storm in the Maggia Valley in southern Switzerland at the end of June. A total of 762 police officers and over 100 firefighters were deployed. Canton Ticino has not yet provided any information on the costs incurred.
The work in the Upper Maggia Valley, which was devastated by a severe storm, has not yet been completed, said the president of the Ticino cantonal government, Christian Vitta, in Bellinzona on Monday. Further commitment is needed to “give this region a future”, he said.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
Ticino is hoping for the additional loans requested by the Swiss government on Friday for the cantons of Graubünden, Ticino, Valais, Vaud and Bern, which were affected by the storms. Parliament must approve the loans, worth CHF56.5 million ($67 million).
From an organisational point of view, the Ticino government drew a positive balance of the clean-up work. The cooperation with the army, whose deployment ended on Monday, had been excellent.
+ Two dead after landslide hits southern Switzerland
As Maurizio Dattrino, commander of the army deployment, explained, the army provided disaster relief in the first phase until the end of July. In the second phase, it primarily supported the civilian service with military vehicles. In all, 538 members of the Locarno and Maggia Valley Civil Defence carried out a total of 3,414 daily missions, explained Patrik Arnold.
While the Upper Maggia Valley is accessible again, the road into the Bavona Valley will remain closed until at least the end of the year, Andrea Baumer, who is responsible for the Bavona Valley road consortium, told the Keystone-SDA news agency. Only homeowners and farmers will be able to access the valley with a permit when road construction work is completed and the weather is fine.
Translated from German by DeepL/gw
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.