More than 72 hours after the landslide residents are still using spades, sticks and their bare hands to try and shift the debris and reach any survivors.
Heavy equipment and aid has been slow to arrive due to the remote location while tribal warfare nearby has forced aid workers to travel in convoys escorted by soldiers and return to the provincial capital, roughly 60km away, at night.
Eight people were killed and 30 houses burnt down on Saturday, a UN agency official said. Aid convoys on Monday passed the still smoking remains of houses.
The first excavator only reached the site late on Sunday, according to a UN official. Six bodies have been retrieved so far.
Contact with other parts of the country is difficult due to patchy reception and limited electricity at the site.
Many people aren’t even sure where their loved ones were when the landslide hit because it’s common for residents to stay at the homes of friends and relatives, according to Matthew Hewitt Tapus, a pastor based in Port Moresby whose home village is roughly 20km from the disaster zone.
“It’s not like everyone is in the same house at the same time, so you have fathers who don’t know where their children are, mothers who don’t know where husbands are, it’s chaotic,” he told Reuters by phone.
Prime Minister James Marape’s office said the disaster was being handled by PNG emergency authorities and Marape was in the capital Port Moresby preparing for the return of parliament on Tuesday, where he faces a no-confidence motion.
