A huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down a Swiss mountainside on Wednesday, sending plumes of dust skyward and coating with mud nearly all of an Alpine village that authorities had evacuated earlier this month as a precaution.

Swiss TV showed the mudslide near Blatten in the southern Lotschental valley, with homes and buildings partially submerged under a mass of brownish sludge. Regional police said a 64-year-old man was reported missing, and search and rescue operations involving a drone with thermal camera were underway. 

“About 90 per cent of the village is covered or destroyed,” said Stephane Ganzer, the head of security in the southern Valais region. In recent days, authorities ordered evacuation of about 300 people, as well as all livestock, from the village amid fears that the 1.5 million cubic metre glacier was at risk of collapse.