VIENNA, June 13, 2024 (AFP) – A landslide after heavy rains in Austria has killed a five-year-old boy, police said, as the environment minister warned Thursday that climate change was hitting the mountainous country “harder and harder”.
In recent weeks, heavy rains have led to widespread flooding and hundreds of landslides across Austria.
The area close to the border with Slovenia and Hungary in the southern provinces of Styria and Burgenland has been especially hit hard.
East of the Styrian city of Graz, a landslide occurred late on Wednesday as a woman was walking with her two sons and two other boys along a road next to a wooded area, police said in a statement.
The landslide caused “around one hundred cubic metres of soil to slide”, burying two of the four boys, and killing one of them, police added.
One injured boy was taken to hospital by helicopter.
The four boys are between five and nine years old, Austrian press agency APA reported.
“The climate crisis is here, we are feeling it and we are being hit harder and harder by the effects of the climate crisis,” Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler told reporters on Thursday, according to APA.
While several geological factors play a significant role when it comes to landslides, heavy rainfall such as the recent ones in Styria “is the most important direct cause for them,” said geologist Michael Lotter of Austria’s federal Institute for Geology, Geophysics, Meteorology and Climatology.
As a result of heavy rainfall — which saturated the slopes with water — hundreds of landslides occurred in Styria province alone in recent weeks, Lotter told AFP.
Experts say climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activities is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as torrential rains and floods.
