Authorities in Papua New Guinea search for safer ground for thousands of landslide survivors

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Authorities in Papua New Guinea were searching on Wednesday for safer ground to relocate thousands of survivors at risk from a potential second landslide in the country’s highlands, while the arrival of heavy earth-moving equipment at the disaster site where hundreds are buried has been delayed, officials said.

Emergency responders say that up to 8,000 people might need to be evacuated as the mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees that crushed the village of Yambali in the South Pacific island nation’s mountainous interior on Friday becomes increasingly unstable.

But an evacuation center near Yambali in Enga province only had room for about 50 families, said Justine McMahon, country director for the humanitarian agency CARE International.

“For the number of people that they anticipate having to help, they actually need more land and I understand the authorities are trying to identify places now,” McMahon said.

Enga provincial disaster committee chairperson and provincial administrator Sandis Tsaka told The Associated Press he would not know how many villagers had been evacuated until late Wednesday.

The unstable ground was also impacting the humanitarian response, said Kate Forbes, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

“Right now, the issue is, I understand,… safety and access,” Forbes told reporters in Manila in the Philippines.

“We have to be sure that the land is somewhat stabilized before we can send our workers in to a great deal of extent,” she added.

The United Nations estimated 670 villagers died in the disaster that immediately displaced 1,650 survivors. Papua New Guinea’s government has told the United Nations it thinks more than 2,000