The presentation focuses on the chronological recapitulation of the Blatten landslide and the  subsequent failure of Birchgletscher. It should give the scientific community some general first hand information from involved practitioners and aims to get everybody to the same level of knowledge. In our presentation we wish to emphasize the procedures of risk management in constrained temporal settings (emergency), the importance of setting up monitoring devices fast, the capabilities of a real-time monitoring and the challenges faced by local decision makers.