A massive landslide devastated a remote village in Papua New Guinea early Friday, killing at least three people and leaving many more missing, as at least 100 homes were damaged and water, power and a major highway were cut off, United Nations officials said.
The authorities in Papua New Guinea, an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, had not released a death toll as of Friday evening. Witnesses said that the landslide struck Yambali, a village of about 3,900 people at the foot of a mountain in Enga Province, while people were asleep and that rocks had buried several homes in a swath of the village.
Three bodies had been recovered by Friday evening, but search efforts were delayed by a blocked highway and the size of the fallen rocks, said a U.N. official, Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration’s office in Papua New Guinea.
After the landslide occurred at 3 a.m., villagers spent Friday scaling boulders larger than shipping containers, looking for bodies, said Benjamin Sipa, a senior project assistant at the U.N. agency who was in the village assessing the damage. “We know there are a lot of people there, but we couldn’t really count up all of them,” he said.
Kenneth Londe, a primary schoolteacher in Yambali said he saw that more than 10 houses had been buried in limestone debris, which crushed families, livestock, gardens and stores across a six-mile stretch.
“The homes are completely invisible now,” he said in an interview. “We cannot even find a single roof.”
One of the dead was his younger brother, who was 25, Mr. Londe said. His body was found at the home of their elder brother, who lived at the foot of the mountain. The elder brother and his family could not be found, Mr. Londe said.
“We could not believe what had actually happened,” he said from his home, which is about a mile away and had been spared. “We are still lost.”
The area affected by the landslide was home to several clans, consisting mostly of subsistence farmers and people who run small businesses like liquor shops, and trade gold from a nearby mine, Mr. Sipa said.
Hours after the landslide, rocks continued to slip down the hill, hampering relief efforts, Mr. Sipa said.
Rocks blocked three streams that had been used for drinking water and disrupted the Porgera Highway, a lifeline for the surrounding area, Mr. Aktoprak said. Some of those displaced by the landslide were sheltering at a local church, he added.
A team of about 50 military officers, provincial authorities and members of the U.N. migration agency were dispatched from Wabag, the provincial capital about two hours away by car, on Friday afternoon, Mr. Aktoprak said. They will assess the damage and deliver supplies, such as water, food, shelter, hygiene kits, kitchen utensils and blankets, he said.
“Everyone is desperately looking for missing family members,” he said. “My fear is that the death toll could be very high.”
