COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – Norwegian authorities insisted on Monday that “there was still hope” of finding survivors in air pockets five days after a landslide killed at least seven people while taking their homes in a village north of capital. Three people are still missing.
Police spokesman Roger Pettersen said that search efforts in the village of Ask, hit by the landslide, 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of Oslo, are still considered “a rescue operation”. But only bodies have been found in the past few days.
Below-zero temperatures in the region are “working against us, but we have been very clear in our advice to (first responders) that as long as there are cavities where the missing may have remained, it is possible to survive,” said Dr. Halvard Stave, who participates in the rescue operation.
The temperatures in Ask were -8 degrees Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday.
“I would still describe the situation as very unreal,” said Anders Oestensen, mayor of the municipality of Gjerdrum, where Ask is located.
Authorities said one victim was found on Friday, three more on Saturday and three more on Sunday. Ten people were injured, one seriously.
Search teams patrolled with dogs like helicopters and drones with heat detection cameras flew over the devastated hill in Ask, a village of 5,000 inhabitants that has been hit by the worst landslide in modern Norwegian history. At least 1,000 people were evacuated.
The landslide on Wednesday morning cut a road through Ask, leaving a deep crater-like ravine. Some buildings now hang from the edge of the ravine, which has grown to be 700 meters (2,300 feet) long and 300 meters (1,000 feet) wide. At least nine buildings with more than 30 apartments have been destroyed.
“This is completely terrible,” said King Harald V after the Norwegian royalty visited the landslide site on Sunday.
The limited number of hours of daylight in Norway at this time of year and fears of further erosion have hampered rescue operations. The soil is fragile on the spot and unable to withstand the weight of heavy rescue equipment.
The exact cause of the accident is not yet known, but the area is known to have a lot of fast clay, a material that can change from solid to liquid. Experts said the rapid clay, combined with excessive rainfall and wet winter weather, may have contributed to the landslide.
In 2005, Norwegian authorities warned people not to build residential buildings in the area, saying it was “a high-risk area” for landslides, but the houses were built there in the late 1990s.
Norway’s biggest landslide was in 1893 in Verdal, north of Trondheim, in the middle of Norway, and killed 116 people, the VG newspaper reported. It was reportedly up to 40 times larger than Ask’s, where somewhere between 1.4 million and 2 million cubic meters of land collapsed.