Traumatised survivors of the massive landslide estimated to have buried hundreds in Papua New Guinea have been slow to move to safer ground.
Government and army geotechnical experts on Thursday were examining the stability of the massive swathe of rubble that crushed Yambali village when a mountainside collapsed last week, Enga provincial administrator Sandis Tsaka said.
The United Nations estimated 670 villagers died in the disaster that immediately displaced 1650 survivors. Papua New Guinea's government has told the United Nations it thinks more than 2,000 people were buried. Only six bodies have been retrieved. There is also a growing disease risk for those downhill from water streams buried beneath rubble and decomposing corpses that continue to seep from the debris.Villagers search through a landslide in Yambali village, in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, Monday, May 27, 2024. "They're emotionally scarred and it's their home and they're reluctant to move, but we're encouraging them to move," Tsaka said.
Authorities acknowledge there were many more people in the village than the almost 4000 that official records suggest. But no one knows how many were present when the mountainside collapsed.
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