Five days after a landslide which buried an entire village and more than 2,000 people in a very isolated region of Papua New Guinea, the situation there remains extremely critical. Local authorities have begun the evacuation of nearly 8,000 people living in the region, as another landslide could occur and roads remain mostly blocked by mounds of debris.
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After a landslide which buried an entire village last Friday and more than 2,000 people in Papua New Guinea, hopes of finding survivors are now almost zero.
So far, no living person has been extracted from the rubble and according to the UNICEF representative on site, Niels Kraaier, now “ This is not a rescue mission, but a recovery mission ” some corpses. Even on this point, interventions are progressing very slowly: only five bodies have been found at present, as well as a member of a sixth body.
It is therefore ” very unlikely » that the emergency services find survivors taking into account the severity of the landslide and the time that has passed since it took place, Niels Kraaier told AFP this Tuesday, May 28.
“ Entire families were buried under the debris »
That is why local authorities, who have made it very clear that they are not equipped to deal with such a catastrophe, are mainly focusing on the evacuation of survivors. They therefore began the evacuation of around 7,900 people threatened by a possible new landslide, in the central highlands of the country.
“ We try to evacuate “, Sandis Tsaka, administrator of the province of Enga, told AFP. “ Every hour, we hear the rock breaking. It’s like a bomb or a gunshot and the rocks keep falling “, he added. However, officials from humanitarian aid agencies told AFP that many residents were refusing to leave the disaster zone in the hope of finding missing loved ones. Sandis Tsaka says that to do this, residents dig the ground using their hands.
“ It was a very populated area, with homes, businesses, churches and schools, and it was completely wiped out. This is the surface of the Moon. They’re just rocks “, he lamented. The survivors are “ traumatized “, continued this manager. “ Entire families were buried under the debris. (…) Every resident of Enga province has a friend or family member who has been killed, missing or affected by this tragedy », Said Sandis Tsaka, during a videoconference this Tuesday.
Call for international aid
Papua New Guinea has also appealed to the international community. The neighboring country, Australia, has already released financial aid of two and a half million dollars and announced that it would send technical experts there, reports our correspondent in Sydney, Grégory Plesse. China, the United States, France and the World Health Organization (WHO) have also offered assistance.
The army is currently trying to transport heavy construction equipment to the site, but the interventions remain very complicated because this landslide occurred in a very isolated region: the roads are blocked by mountains of debris, there is a risk high of replica, and it is a region marked by tribal clashes very violent.
Several dozen people were killed at the start of the year, and villages in the region were burned again over the weekend. A high tension areawhich does not make the already very difficult work of rescuers easier.
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