Unfortunately, recent terrible news coming from the highlands of Papua New Guinea – a tremendous landslide has hit the unique district, and rescue workers have been frantically searching for hundreds of people who are missing under the piles of earth and mud.
It struck the Kaokalam village in the Enga province shortly after sunrise on Friday morning, affecting at least 1,182 houses. After a long pause foreshadowed by the fading voices, a local community leader, Mark Ipuia, explained that more than 300 bodies could be buried in the area, out of which only four have been currently exhumed.
United Nations official Serhan Aktoprak said
he is seriously concerned and noted that with all these slips occurring daily, it is a very unsafe ground for rescue operations. The highway has also been cut off, making it difficult for the rescue teams to access the slide-prone area; instead, they have had to employ the services of helicopters.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade informed and stated that more than six villages in the Mulitaka region were affected. Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape has stated that disaster officials are currently engaging the military.
Like most of the South Pacific region, Papua New Guinea is commonly visited by natural disasters, and this tragedy is not new. As the friends and kin of the victims search through the debris and rubble, the entire country waits expectantly for a sign that someone might still be alive following such colossal destruction.
