At least thirty-four people are killed in…
June 1818 CE
After an increase of the glacier during the "Year Without a Summer", an ice cone had started to form in 1816 in the valley.
It was created by the accumulation of the falling seracs of the terminus.
A lake was formed but it emptied on May 27, 1817, without causing any fatalities.
In April 1818 the lake measured about two kilometers in length
On May 10, 1818, the engineer Ignaz Venetz had been called by the canton.
To stop the rapid rise of waters, he decided to drill a hole through the ice. The work began one day later.
A tunnel was drilled from the two sides, about twenty meters above the level of the lake.
An avalanche of ice occurred on May 18 but without any casualties.
A secondary tunnel was then drilled for safety reasons.
A week later the level of the lake reached 10 meters below the tunnel.[
On May 27 an enormous piece of ice detached itself from the cone in the lake and floated to the surface while making terrible noise; everybody escaped.
They went back to work two days later.
The none hundred and ninety-eight meter-long hole was completed on June 4.
Other large pieces of ice detached from the cone and floated back.
The waters finally reached the level of the hole on June, 13, at 22:00.
They continued to rise until June 14, when the level of the lake began to fall because of the erosion of the hole by the waterfall.
Some water also ran out from the base of the cone.
Only two men stayed in place; Venetz warned the inhabitants of the valley of the danger
On the morning of June 16, terrible noises and violent detonations were heard.
The cone began to crack.
A group of British tourists and a sketcher from Lausanne visited the place with Venetz.
In the afternoon, Venetz and the workers escaped to the heights of Fionnay.
Finally, at 16:30, the dam broke and eighteen million cubic meters of water invaded the valley.
Half an hour later the lake was empty.
The flood reached the village of Bagnes ten minutes later; the alert was given to Martigny before 18:00, but too late.
The wave invaded Martigny-Bourg a few minutes later.
The rise of the waters was observed along the Rhone, at 19:00 in Saint-Maurice and at 23:00 on Lake Geneva.
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