MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Authorities are concerned a second landslide and disease outbreak is looming at a flood site in Papua New Guinea. Disasters causing mass casualties Thousands of people have been told to prepare to evacuate after tons of rubble swept through the village, trapping bodies under water, authorities said on Tuesday.
A limestone mountainside collapsed on Friday, devastating the remote highlands of the South Pacific nation of Yambari with piles of boulders, mud and broken trees. Serhan Aktoprak, the International Organization for Migration representative in Papua New Guinea, said recent rains and streams trapped between the ground and the rubble had further destabilized the layer of debris.
The UN agency has deployed personnel to the scene in Enga province to help evacuate 1,600 displaced people. 670 Villagers were killed, and the Papua New Guinea government told the United Nations it believed more than 2,000 people were buried. By Tuesday, six bodies had been recovered from the rubble.
“We’re hearing reports that there could be another landslide and that 8,000 people may need to be evacuated,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press.
“This is a matter of great concern. Shifting soil and debris is posing serious dangers and the total number of people who could be affected could be more than 6,000,” he said, including villagers whose sources of clean drinking water have been buried and subsistence farmers who have lost their vegetable fields.
“If this mass of debris is not stopped and keeps moving, it could pick up speed and cause further destruction to other communities and villages further down the mountain,” Aktoprak said.
A UN statement later put the number of affected people, including those who may need to be evacuated or relocated, at 7,849. The UN said 42 percent of those were children under the age of 16.
Enga Provincial Disaster Committee chairperson and provincial administrator Sandis Tshaka told Radio New Zealand some villagers had been evacuated on Tuesday, although it was unclear how many.
Tshaka said as many people as possible would be evacuated on Wednesday.
Moving survivors to safer areas has been a priority in recent days, with shelters being set up on either side of the pile of rubble, which the UN says is up to eight metres (26 feet) high and spreads out over an area equivalent to three to four football fields.
The sight of villagers digging with their bare hands through the muddy rubble in search of the remains of their relatives is also worrying.
“My biggest concern at this point is the bodies will decompose, get into the water and pose serious health risks related to communicable diseases,” Aktoprak said.
Aktoprak’s agency raised these concerns Tuesday at an online disaster management conference of domestic and international disaster responders.
The warning comes as geotechnical experts and heavy machinery are expected to arrive at the site shortly.
The Papua New Guinea government on Sunday formally requested additional assistance from the United Nations and to coordinate donations from other countries.
An Australian disaster response team arrived in Papua New Guinea, Australia’s closest neighbour, on Tuesday, including a geological hazard assessment team and a drone to help map the site.
“Their role will be, among other things, to carry out geological investigations, to establish the extent of the landslide, the instability of the land and, of course, to identify where any bodies are,” Australia’s Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt said.
The Australian government has offered long-term logistical support for clearing debris, retrieving bodies, and assisting displaced people. The government announced an initial aid package of 2.5 million Australian dollars (1.7 million US dollars).
The earth-moving equipment used by the Papua New Guinea military was being transported from the city of Lae, 400 kilometers (250 miles) to the east, and was due to arrive shortly, said Justin McMahon, Papua New Guinea director for the humanitarian group CARE International.
The landslide buried 200 metres of the state’s main highway, but the main road from Yambari to the provincial capital, Wabag, and Lae has been reopened, authorities said in a statement from Enga on Tuesday.
“It was complicated by the fact that parts of the road were destroyed and the ground was unstable, but they have some confidence they’ll be able to get heavy equipment in today,” McMahon said Tuesday.
The excavator, donated by a local construction company on Sunday, is the first of the heavy machinery brought in to help villagers who have been digging with shovels and farm tools to find bodies.
Heartbroken and disheartened Yambari resident Ebit Kambu thanked people for trying to search for his missing relatives in the rubble.
“Eighteen members of my family are buried beneath the rubble and dirt where I am standing,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation through a translator.
“But we have not been able to recover the body and I am standing here helpless,” she added.
John and Jacqueline Yandam, a couple from Yambari, said they were trapped under the rubble for eight hours before neighbours managed to dig them out on Friday morning.
A large rock fell and acted as a barrier to protect the couple from being crushed by rubble, but without help from neighbours they would have remained trapped inside their home.
“I thank God that he saved my life,” his wife told Papua New Guinea’s national television, referring to the mountainside collapsing at 3 a.m.
“We were sure we were going to die, but the big rocks didn’t crush us,” she added.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster planes, four-engine transport planes capable of carrying 77 tonnes (85 U.S. tons) of cargo, were already ferrying supplies from Australia to Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby.
Two small turboprop transport planes from the Royal Australian Air Force had already arrived in Port Moresby, 600 km (370 miles) southeast of the affected villages.
“There’s a lot more we’re trying to do, but frankly, part of the issue here is not putting strain on a system that’s under a lot of stress right now,” Marless told the council.
Smaller C-130 Hercules and C-27J Spartan transport planes will ferry supplies from the capital to Mount Hagen, the capital of the Western Highlands province, from where the cargo will be transported overland to neighbouring Enga province.
Those plans were dealt a blow by news that a bridge between Mount Hagen and Wabag collapsed on Tuesday. The cause of the collapse was not made clear but it was unrelated to the landslide, according to officials.
Immigration officials said the detour would add two to three hours to the journey. Emergency work is underway to repair the bridge.
Papua New Guinea is a diverse, developing country with 800 languages and a population of 10 million people, mostly subsistence farmers.
