The UN migration agency says displaced residents are in urgent need of clean water, purification tablets and food.
Papua New Guinea has ruled out finding more survivors under the rubble of last week’s massive landslide, as a United Nations agency warned of a “significant risk of outbreak” among the displaced residents, who have not yet received sufficient food and drinking water.
Six days later a mountainside community in Enga province was buried in a sea of earth, rocks and debris, the United Nations migration agency (IOM) said on Thursday that water sources were contaminated and the risk of disease was increasing.
Much of the area’s water flows through the landslide site, which today is a 600-meter-long (1,970 ft) cemetery housing an as-yet-undetermined number of people.
“Streams currently flowing with debris are contaminated, posing a significant risk of outbreak,” the U.N. migration agency told partners in a rapid assessment report.
“No method is used to treat the water to make it drinkable,” the text says, warning against diarrhea and malaria.
For much of the past week, residents of villages affected by the landslide dug through countless tons of earth in search of buried loved ones.
Witnesses reported that the stench of the corpses had become overwhelming.
“No bodies are expected to be alive under the rubble at this stage, so this is a full recovery operation to recover human remains,” said Sandis Tsaka, chairman of the Enga province disaster committee, to the Reuters news agency.
Authorities and rescuers only managed to recover 11 bodies. At least two people had survived and were rescued three days after the disaster.
More than 2,000 people may have been buried alive, according to the country’s government.
A UN estimate puts the death toll at around 670, while a businessman and former official told Reuters it was closer to 160.
“Dangerous terrain”
According to IOM, getting drinking water, purification tablets and “vital supplies” to the site are the agency’s main priorities.
But heavy equipment and aid were slow to arrive due to dangerous mountainous terrain, a damaged bridge on the main road and tribal unrest in the area.
Tsaka said it has not yet been possible to bring such machines, engineers or technical tenders to the site “due to the risk of unstable ground movement.”
Humanitarian agencies and foreign donors also worry that unreliable estimates of the number of dead, injured and displaced people are complicating the international response.
“The lack of accurate and timely information on the affected areas and population hampers the effective planning and delivery of humanitarian assistance,” IOM warned.
Satellite imagery experts, disaster relief professionals, and Papua New Guinea officials and diplomats all told the AFP news agency that the government’s earlier death toll of 2,000 was probably considerably inflated.
Tsaka, Enga’s provincial administrator, said Thursday that the death toll was likely in the “hundreds” rather than thousands.
He said traumatized survivors were unable to provide reliable information about their loved ones still missing.
While some key teams were still struggling to reach the disaster area, he said Papua New Guinea’s response officers were “keeping their heads above water”.
