Papua New Guinea Landslide: Death Toll Exceeds 670, Several Feared Dead; Thousands Displaced, Hope Of Life Bleak

Papua New Guinea Landslide Death Toll: A village in the remote, mountainous part of Papua New Guinea faced a massive landslide on May 24 following which an emergency response was undertaken to rescue people and conduct evacuations. On the landslide, which truck the Enga province, about 600 kms northwest of capital Port Moresby, residents from surrounding areas said boulders and trees from a collapsed mountainside buried parts of the community and left it isolated. While the local officials are saying that the death toll is somewhere more than 100, UN Agency, The International Organisation for Migration has said that in this landslide, more than 670 people have lost their lives and many others are feared dead. Thousands of people have been displaced and it seems that hope of life in the village is unfortunately bleak…

Papua New Guinea Landslide: Death Toll Reaches 670 According To UN

As mentioned earlier, The International Organization for Migration on Sunday increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea to more than 670 as emergency responders and traumatized relatives gave up hope that any survivors will now be found. “They are estimating that more than 670 people (are) under the soil at the moment,” Serhan Aktoprak, Chief of UN Migration Agency’s Mission in the South Pacific Island Nation, told The Associated Press. Aktoprak further said the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday’s landslide. The previous estimate had been 60 homes.

He said the new estimated death toll was “not solid” because it was based on the average size of the region’s families per household. He would not speculate on the possibility that the actual toll could be higher. “It is difficult to say. We want to be quite realistic,” Aktoprak said. “We do not want to come up with any figures that would inflate the reality.”

Local Officials Say Death Toll At 100 Or More

Local officials had initially put the death toll on Friday at 100 or more. Only five bodies and a leg of a sixth victim had been recovered by Sunday, when an excavator donated by a local builder became the first piece of mechanical earth-moving equipment to join the recovery effort. Relief crews were moving survivors to safer ground on Sunday as tons of unstable earth and tribal warfare, which is rife in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, threatened the rescue effort.

Around 250 additional houses have been condemned since the landslide because of still-shifting ground, leaving an estimated 1,250 people homeless, officials said. The national government meanwhile is considering whether it needs to officially request more international support. Crews have given up hope of finding survivors under earth and rubble 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) deep. “People are coming to terms with this so there is a serious level of grieving and mourning,” Aktoprak said.

(Inputs from AP)