humanitarian aid arrives at landslide site, where 2,000 people were buried

Many of the children who survived “stopped speaking” due to the trauma, NGOs explain.

Food and medicine began arriving on Wednesday, May 29, at the site of a landslide that decimated an entire village in Papua New Guinea. Some 2,000 people could be buried under the massive landslide that destroyed a highland town in Enga province, in the center of the country, early on May 24, according to the government. On site, humanitarian workers discovered children rendered mute by the shock of the disaster.

After several days of digging using makeshift tools, only six bodies were removed from the mudslide. Miok Michael, the local community leader, explains that 19 “family members and loved ones” missing. “Help is slowly reaching the site”said the official who visited the site. “But the displaced continue to cry and call for help. There is no suitable house to sleep in, all the houses have been buried.” Rescuers have given up hope of finding survivors under the meters of mud and debris.

Residents therefore began to organize funeral processions, collective demonstrations locally called “haus krai” and which can last for weeks. Even without a detailed assessment at this stage, humanitarians point out that many children were victims of the disaster, while an estimated 40% of the region’s inhabitants were under 16 years old. “What we hear is that because of what they saw and experienced, many children stopped speaking”, Justine McMahon, from the NGO CARE Papua New Guinea, told AFP. According to Niels Kraaier of Unicef ​​Papua New Guinea, at least nine orphaned children have been identified.

Unicef ​​said it had started distributing hygiene kits including buckets, cans and soap, while the NGO World Vision reported that residents still lacked food, shelter, blankets and mosquito nets. Rescue operations were complicated by the remoteness of the site, nearby tribal violence and damage caused by the landslide that cut off the main access road.

The authorities have begun the evacuation of thousands of people threatened by a possible new landslide, but, according to NGOs, many residents refuse to leave the area in the hope of finding missing loved ones.