Rescue workers at the landslide site in Ask, Norway, on 2 January.
Photographer: Tor Erik Schroeder / NTB / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Tor Erik Schroeder / NTB / AFP / Getty Images
Norwegian rescuers have now recovered four bodies in a village not far from the country’s capital that was hit by a landslide on Wednesday, with six people still missing.
Knut Hammer, head of the police operation, told reporters late Saturday that the latest three discoveries had been found in the same area in a building, about 100 meters away. Rescuers are still searching at full capacity for survivors under difficult circumstances.
The fast clay slide took place about 20 kilometers north of Oslo and follows a month’s record rainfall. About 1,000 people were evacuated from the area after the landslide devastated large parts of the town.
It is known that such landslides occur in Norway and neighboring Sweden when the rapid clay found in some parts of Scandinavia becomes full of rainwater and becomes liquid, according to the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute. Several houses were exported to the sea due to a similar slide in June. No one was injured in that case.
(Updates with search details in second paragraph)