COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Norwegian officials on Monday insisted there was “still” hope of finding survivors in airbags five days after a landslide killed at least seven people as it swept away houses in a village north of the capital . Three people are still missing.
Roger Pettersen, police spokesman, said efforts in the landslide town of Ask, 25 kilometers northeast of Oslo, were still being considered a rescue operation. But only corpses have been found in the past few days.
The region’s temperature below freezing “works against us, but we were very clear in our advice to the (rescuers) that as long as there are cavities where the missing people may have stayed, it is possible to survive,” said Dr. . Halvard Stave, who is taking part in the rescue operation.
The temperature in Ask was Monday minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
“I would still describe the situation as very unreal,” said Anders Oestensen, the mayor of Gjerdrum municipality, where Ask is located.
Authorities said one victim was found Friday, another three Saturday and three others Sunday. Ten people were injured, one of them seriously.
Search teams patrolled dogs, while helicopters and drones flew with heat-tracking cameras over the devastated hill in Ask, a 5,000-strong town hit by the worst landslide in modern Norwegian history. At least 1,000 people were evacuated.
The landslide cut across a road through Ask early Wednesday, leaving a deep, crater-like gorge. Some buildings now hang on the edge of the gorge, which has become 700 meters long and 300 meters wide. At least nine buildings with more than 30 apartments were destroyed.
“It’s absolutely horrible,” King Harald V said after the Norwegian royals visited the landslide on Sunday.
The limited number of daylight hours in Norway at this time of year and the fear of further erosion hampered rescue operations. The ground is fragile on the site and cannot withstand the weight of heavy rescue equipment.
The exact cause of the crash is not yet known, but there is a lot of fast clay in the area, a material that can change from solid to liquid form. Experts said the rapid clay, coupled with excessive rainfall and damp winter weather, may be contributing to the landslide.
In 2005, the Norwegian authorities warned people not to build residential buildings in the area, saying it was a “high risk zone” for landslides, but eventually houses were built there later in the decade.
The largest landslide in Norway was in 1893 in Verdal, north of Trondheim in the middle of Norway and killed 116 people, reports the newspaper VG. It was apparently up to 40 times larger than the one in Ask where between 1.4 million and 2 million cubic meters of land fell.