UN estimates death toll from landslide in Papua New Guinea at 670

A UN official in Papua New Guinea estimated on Sunday May 26 that the death toll from the landslide which buried a village in this South Pacific country was at 670, where emergency services are still working to find possible survivors. “It is estimated that more than 150 houses were buried and 670 people died”Serhan Aktoprak, a UN migration official based in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, told AFP on Sunday.

The landslide occurred during the night from Thursday to Friday around 3:00 a.m. (5:00 p.m. GMT Thursday) in the province of Enga, in the center of the country, taking by surprise the inhabitants of a village who were buried under piles of mud and rubble while they sleep. “The situation is terrible, the earth continues to slide. The water is flowing and this creates a huge risk for everyone present.Serhan Aktoprak said on Sunday, specifying that more than a thousand people had to flee the disaster area.

“The bodies buried under the earth”

While it will probably take days or even weeks to arrive at a definitive assessment, five bodies had already been found on Saturday evening. “People use sticks, spades and large agricultural forks to dig out bodies buried under the earth”, detailed Serhan Aktoprak. Initially, humanitarian organizations and local authorities said they feared that between 100 and 300 people had died in the disaster.

But this toll was revised upwards by the UN when rescuers realized that the village hit by the landslide had more inhabitants than estimated, explained Serhan Aktoprak. It has nearly 4,000 inhabitants, and due to its location, was a rallying point for many gold prospectors in the region.

Tribal violence

On Sunday, access to the surroundings of the disaster area was hampered by tribal violence which broke out along the only access route, delaying the work of relief workers, according to Serhan Aktoprak. These rivalries are, however, not “landslide-related”, he clarified. In response, the Papua New Guinea army mobilized “a security escort” to ensure the passage of aid convoys.

In some places, the landslide – a mixture of rocks and earth that broke away from Mount Mungalo – reaches a thickness of eight meters. According to humanitarian organizations, the disaster wiped out the village’s livestock, food gardens and sources of drinking water. For residents of the region, the landslide must have been triggered by the heavy rains that fell on the region in recent weeks.

According to the World Bank, Papua New Guinea has one of the wettest climates in the world, and heavy rainfall regularly hits its humid regions in the country’s highlands. According to scientists, variation in rainfall patterns due to climate change is increasing the risk of landslides in the country. In March, at least 23 people lost their lives when a landslide occurred in a neighboring province.