More than 2,000 buried alive in Papua New Guinea landslide, government says

Melbourne, Australia – The Papua New Guinea government said a landslide on Friday buried more than 2,000 people alive. He formally asked for international help.

The government’s value is about three times higher than a United Nations estimate of 670.

The remains of only six people have been recovered so far.

In a letter to the UN Resident Coordinator dated Sunday and seen by several news agencies, the acting director of the South Pacific island nation’s National Disaster Center said the landslide “buried more than 2,000 people alive” and caused ” great destruction.”

The landslide caused “great destruction to buildings and vegetable gardens and had a major impact on the country’s economic survival,” the letter said, according to Agence France-Presse.

The letter also said that the main highway to the Porgera gold mine was “completely blocked”.

Casualty estimates have varied widely since the disaster occurred and it was not immediately clear how authorities arrived at the new number of people affected.

Australia was preparing on Monday to send aircraft and other equipment to help at the landslide site, as overnight rains in the country’s mountainous interior raised fears that the tonnes of rubble that buried residents could become dangerously unstable.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said his officials have been speaking with their Papua New Guinea counterparts since Friday, when a mountain collapsed in the village of Yambali in Enga province.

“The exact nature of the support we offer will play out in the coming days,” Marles told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“Obviously (we have) airlift capability to get people there. There may be other equipment that we can use in terms of search and rescue (and other matters)… which we are talking to PNG about now.” Marles.

Papua New Guinea is Australia’s closest neighbor and the countries are developing closer defense ties as part of an Australian effort to counter China’s growing influence in the region. Australia is also the most generous provider of foreign aid to its former colony, which became independent in 1975.

Heavy rain fell for two hours overnight in the provincial capital of Wabag, 56 kilometers from the devastated village. A weather report was not immediately available in Yambali, where communications are limited.

But emergency crews were concerned about the rain’s impact on the already unstable mass of debris that extends between 6 and 8 meters deep in an area the size of three to four football fields.

An excavator donated by a local builder on Sunday became the first piece of heavy earthmoving machinery brought in to help residents digging with shovels and farm tools to find bodies. Working around still-moving debris is treacherous.

Serhan Aktoprak, head of the UN International Organization for Migration mission in Papua New Guinea, said water was seeping between the rubble and the land below, increasing the risk of a new landslide.

He said he did not expect to know the weather conditions in Yambali until Monday afternoon.

“What really worries me personally is the weather, the weather, the weather,” Aktoprak said. “Because the earth is still sliding. The rocks are falling,” he said.

Papua New Guinea’s Defense Minister Billy Joseph and the director of the government’s National Disaster Center, Laso Mana, flew on Sunday in an Australian military helicopter from the capital Port Moresby to Yambali, 370 miles northwest, to get perspective on first hand of what is happening. necessary.

Mana’s office published a photo of him in Yambali handing a local official a check for 500,000 kina ($130,000) to buy emergency supplies for the 4,000 displaced survivors.

Earthmoving equipment used by the Papua New Guinea military was being transported to the disaster site, 400 kilometers from the city of Lae on the east coast.

Traumatized villagers are divided over whether heavy machinery should be allowed to dig up and potentially further damage the bodies of their buried relatives, authorities said.