HELSINKI (AP) – Rescue teams searching for survivors four days after a landslide swept away houses in a Norwegian town found no signs of life on Saturday amid devastated buildings and rubble.
Two bodies were recovered, but searchers are still searching for eight people who are believed to be missing. The landslide in the village of Ask is the worst in modern Norwegian history and has shocked citizens in the Nordic country.
Land search teams patrolled with dogs while helicopters and drones with heat-tracking cameras flew over the devastated hill in Ask, a village of 5,000 people, 25 kilometers north of Oslo, amid harsh winter conditions.
Norwegian police have promised not to reduce the search, although a rescue team from neighboring Sweden has already returned.
Local police chief Ida Melbo Oeystese said it was possible to find survivors in airbags in the destroyed buildings.
“Medically, you can survive a few days if you have air,” she told reporters at a news conference.
On Saturday afternoon, a second body was found after a first Friday was discovered. Only one Dalmatian dog has so far been rescued alive from the ruins.
Late Friday, Norwegian police released the names and birth years of the ten people initially reported missing, including a 2-year-old child. Officials have not yet identified the two bodies recovered.
The landslide cut across a road through Ask early Wednesday, leaving a deep, crater-like gorge that cars could not pass. Photos and videos showed dramatic scenes of buildings hanging from the edge of the gorge, which became 700 meters long and 300 meters wide. At least nine buildings with more than 30 apartments were destroyed.
The rescue operation is hampered by the limited number of daylight hours in the area at this time of year and the fear of further soil erosion. The ground is fragile on the site and is unlikely to contain the weight of rescue equipment, including a heavy vehicle of the Norwegian army.
More than 1,000 people have been evacuated, and officials said up to 1,500 people could be relocated from the area amid fears of further landslides.
The exact cause of the accident is still unknown, but the Gjerdrum area is known for having very fast clay, a form of clay that can change from solid to liquid form. Experts said the dust of the clay, along with excessive rainfall and the humid weather conditions typical of Norway, contributed to the landslide.
The Norwegian authorities warned people in 2005 not to build residential buildings in the area, but eventually houses were built there later in the decade.
Spokesman Toril Hofshagen of the Norwegian Water Management and Energy Directorate calls the landslide unique in its destruction.
“Not since 1893 has there been a rapid clay grass of this dimension in Norway,” Hofshagen told Norwegian media on Saturday.