Sydney, Australia, May 29 (EFE).- Humanitarian aid began to arrive Wednesday in the remote area of northern Papua New Guinea devastated by a massive avalanche that buried a town, including an unknown number of people.
“Today, about five days later, the situation is still very complicated because the landslide is still [shifting] – slower, but continuing. And the entire area is unstable, including the road that leads to the area,” Mate Bagossy, United Nations humanitarian adviser in PNG, told EFE.
Bagossy assured that “the majority of humanitarian aid is arriving as of today.”
Aid agencies from the US (USAID), the European Union (ECHO), and UN agencies held an emergency meeting on Tuesday with more than 50 attendees to coordinate the response to the landslide that occurred at 3 am Friday morning near the Porgera gold mine, in the northern province of Enga, about 600 kilometers from Port Moresby.
The distribution of humanitarian aid faces difficulties similar to those of rescue tasks – due to the instability of the terrain and under which an unknown number of victims are buried (more than 2,000, according to the National Disaster Center), there are infrastructure problems.
On Tuesday, the bridge connecting the main highway with the province of Enga collapsed, according to the UN, which also reported another landslide in an area close to the disaster and adverse weather conditions.
“The (original) landslide has buried a town and part of the provincial highway that connects the capital of the province with the district of Porgera (where the disaster took place),” Bagossy told EFE in a message from Wabag, capital of Enga.
“The accident site is located about two hours’ drive from Wabag. Access is relatively difficult with the main road closed.”
Added to these problems are tribal conflicts in the region, which force humanitarian workers to travel with military escorts to the site of the disaster.
According to UN agencies, the most pressing needs include clean water, food, clothing and hygiene kits, while local authorities have asked the international community to send engineers to advise on geological risks.
In addition to the distribution of aid and the management of evacuations, Bagossy said that the priority is to “recover bodies of buried victims,” with only nine unearthed so far from a terrain that is between “six and eight meters” deep.
The UN estimated on Tuesday that 7,849 people have been affected by the landslide, including those at risk of being evacuated and those who were buried, a figure calculated according to a 2022 census.
According to Unicef, more than 40 percent of those affected are under 16 years of age. EFE
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