COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Norwegian authorities said on Tuesday that they “do not expect to find survivors” from a landslide that swept through houses in a residential area for almost a week, killing seven people.
Three people are still missing in the December 30 disaster that destroyed at least nine buildings with more than 30 apartments in the village of Ask, located 25 kilometers northeast of Oslo. The landslide was one of the worst in modern Norwegian history.
“It is with great sadness that I must say that we have no hope of finding people alive after the landslide,” said local police chief Ida Melbo Oeystese.
“We did everything we could. But this natural disaster had significant forces. Those who died died relatively quickly, ”she added, visibly moved.
The search teams will continue to “work to find all the missing,” said Oeystese.
The police chief spoke hours after a puppy was found alive in the rubble, raising hopes for rescue workers. The dog was found Monday night “in good condition” in an area where rescue workers worked, said police spokesman Ivar Myrboe.
Another minor landslide just before noon on Tuesday forced the search terms to evacuate the site and no one was injured, police said. A rescuer, Kenneth Wangen, said the landslide “was not dramatic” and that the search terms received early warning from drones and other emergency responders.
Geologists will assess the site before the search continues, officials said.
Since the original landslide, dog search teams have been examining the rubble in sub-zero temperatures, while helicopters and drones with heat detection cameras flew over the devastated hillside in the village of 5,000 residents.
At least 1,000 people were evacuated. Some buildings now hang from the edge of a deep ravine, which has grown to be 700 meters long ((2,300 feet) and 300 meters wide (1,000 feet).
The exact cause of the landslide is not yet known, but the area has a lot of fast clay, which can quickly change from solid to liquid form when stirred. 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 Ask area, saying it was “a high-risk area” for landslides, but the houses were built there in the late decade.
A landslide in central Norway in 1893 killed 116 people. 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.