Looking for survivors: Locals reacting during search and rescue efforts at the site of a landslide at Mulitaka village. — AFP
Authorities fear a second landslide and a disease outbreak are looming at the scene of Papua New Guinea’s mass-casualty disaster because of water streams and bodies trapped beneath the tons of debris that swept over a village, a United Nations official said.
A mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees devastated Yambali in the South Pacific nation’s remote highlands when a limestone mountainside sheared away on Friday.
The blanket of debris has become more unstable with recent rain and streams trapped between the ground and rubble, said Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in the country.
The UN agency has officials at the scene in Enga province helping shelter 1,600 displaced people. The agency estimates 670 villagers died, while the government has told the UN it thinks more than 2,000 people were buried. Five bodies had been retrieved from the rubble by Monday.
“We are hearing suggestions that another landslide can happen and maybe 8,000 people need to be evacuated,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press.
Locals digging at the site of the landslide at the same village.
“This is a major concern. The movement of the land, the debris, is causing a serious risk, and overall, the total number of people that may be affected might be 6,000 or more,” he said, including villagers whose source of clean drinking water has been buried and subsistence farmers who lost their vegetable gardens.
“If this debris mass is not stopped, if it continues moving, it can gain speed and further wipe out other communities and villages further down the mountain,” Aktoprak said.
Scenes of villagers digging through muddy debris with their bare hands in search of their relatives’ remains were concerning.
“My biggest fear at the moment is that corpses are decaying, water is flowing and this is going to poise serious health risks in relation to contagious diseases,” Aktoprak said. His agency was raising those concerns at a disaster management virtual meeting of national and international responders yesterday.
The warning comes as geotechnical experts and heavy earth-moving equipment are expected to reach the site soon.
The Papua New Guinea government on Sunday officially asked the UN for additional help and to coordinate contributions from individual nations.
An Australian disaster response team was scheduled to arrive in the country yesterday, as it is Australia’s nearest neighbour.
It will include a geohazard assessment team and drones to help map the site.
“Their role will be particularly helping perform geotechnical surveillance to establish the level of the landslip, the instability of the land there, obviously doing some work around identifying where bodies are,” said Murray Watt, Australia’s minister for emergency management. — AP
