Port Moresby: Papua New Guinea is evacuating some 7,900 people living near a powerful landslide, the province’s top official said on Tuesday as fears grew.
“We are trying to evacuate,” provincial governor Enga Sandis Tsaka told AFP.
“Every hour you can hear rocks breaking – like bombs or guns, rocks coming down,” Tsaka said.
A mountain community in Enga province was hit by a landslide on Friday morning after part of Mount Mungalo collapsed, destroying many houses and people sleeping inside.
Papua New Guinea’s national disaster center fears more than 2,000 people may be buried, but so far only five bodies and a sixth leg have been recovered from the rubble.
Tsaka said rescue workers were trying to evacuate 7,900 people from the area to ensure “the ongoing landslide does not claim more lives than it has already lost.”
The area was “completely overrun” and the community was “shocked,” he said.
People dig with their hands and fingers.”
Tsaka said the area has many houses, businesses, churches and schools.
“It’s completely destroyed. The surface of the moon is just stone,” he said.
Tsaka said he was speaking in an emergency online meeting with foreign governments on Tuesday morning and asked for urgent help to deal with the risk of landslides, manage the emergency and ensure quick delivery of supplies.
“I am not equipped to fight this disaster.”
Relief efforts have been delayed by the remoteness of Papua New Guinea’s mountainous terrain, as well as road closures and nearby tribal wars.