Rescuers recovered the bodies of seven people killed in a landslide in Norway last week and are still looking for survivors, police said on Monday.
Three people remained missing after the disaster in the village of Ask, about 30 miles northeast of Oslo, police said. Officials said the landslide on Wednesday, which led to the evacuation of people from the area, was related to rapid clay, which can go into liquid when overloaded.
“We are desperate for the terrible and tragic result of this slide”, Anders Ostensen, the mayor of Gjerdrum, the local municipality that includes Ask, told reporters on Monday. “The situation is still unrealistic for us, but we are trying to turn things around and we started the work of trying to get back to normal.”
About 1,000 people were evacuated from Ask after the area’s clayey soil collapsed, engulfing at least seven houses in mud flows and injuring 10 people.
The military and firefighters are helping with rescue efforts, which have been complicated by short days with little daylight, cold weather and the difficulty of navigating the mud, which remains unstable in some places.
Six of the victims, whose bodies were recovered on Friday and in the last few days, were identified. They are: Eirik Gronolen, 31, Lisbeth Neraas, 54 and his son Marius Brustad, 29, and Bjorn-Ivar Grymyr Jansen, 40, Charlot Grymyr Jansen, 31, and his 2-year-old daughter, Alma Grymyr Jansen. A body found has not yet been identified.
Three others are still missing.
King Harald V and Queen Sonja visited the site of the landslide on Sunday and met with rescue workers, local volunteers and survivors. “I am having trouble finding something to say, because it is absolutely horrible,” said King Harald. They thanked the rescuers and said they were impressed with the relief efforts.
On Monday, it was not clear exactly what caused the clay to collapse.
“We will have to assess what happened during the construction in Gjerdrum,” Tina Bru, Norway’s energy and oil minister, told NRK on Monday. “It is natural to go over the rules and see what we can learn from this, so that something like this does not happen again.”
Although landslides in Norway are relatively rare, another in the north of the country in June swept away at least eight buildings at sea, but did not hurt anyone. More than 110,000 people in Norway live in areas where there is a risk of such landslides, according to government figures. The village of Ask was in an area at high risk for these landslides, but the authorities did not consider the area unsafe for construction.
The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, an independent research center that assessed the region for landslide risks for developers and the government, published reports detailing its investigations in the region from 2003 to 2007. He had said that a number of measures were needed to stabilize the area. The institute said it is analyzing documents related to the disaster and that the police will initiate an investigation.
The developers told local media that they followed the institute’s recommendations, which included removing soil from higher ground to reduce loads on clay soils and erosion protection, during construction at Ask.
Water and energy are still lacking in the area, local officials said.
“The village was hit hard,” said John-Magnus Restad, a pilot who lives with his wife and son about 800 meters north of the site. He added that they were not sure whether they would remain on Ask. Although they knew the area was made of fast clay, he said he never believed that “such a landslide could happen”.
But the decision was clear to Trine Johnsgard, 60, who said that she and her husband, Kjetil Johnsgard, who lives about 80 meters from the gorge, were lucky to escape his home with his dog Linus, a wallet and a cell phone .
“I hope we don’t have to go back, because we don’t dare,” Johnsgard told the VG newspaper, adding that he was concerned about the value of his home, which is on a street called Nystulia, where many of the disappeared lived. “Nobody wants to move to Nystulia right now.”