Second body found at site of Norway landslide

GJERDRUM – Rescue workers today recovered a second body and continued searching for another eight people still missing days after a landslide buried homes in a Norwegian village.

“We still have hope of finding survivors,” rescue operations chief Roy Alkvist told reporters.

A whole hillside collapsed in the village of Ask, 25km northeast of the capital Oslo, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, injuring 10 people, one of them seriously.

Police also said that the sole person to suffer serious injuries was transferred to Oslo for treatment shortly after the disaster.

Homes were buried under mud, others cut in two and some houses left teetering over a crater caused by the mudslide, with several subsequently falling over the edge.

The landslide destroyed several houses and shifted others hundreds of metres.

Earlier today, local police chief Ida Melbo Oystese said authorities hoped some people might have survived thanks to pockets of air inside partially intact buildings.

No details have been released about the identity of the second body, which was found by sniffer dogs. There have been no details released on the first body, which was recovered yesterday.

But police have released a list of the names of 10 missing people: eight adults, a two-year-old and a 13-year-old child.

About a thousand people have had to be evacuated from Ask, which has 5,000 people, because of fears about the safety of their homes. There was more movement of the land there overnight.

“We are at a hotel,” two of the evacuees, Olav Gjerdingen and Sissel Meyer Gjerdingen, told AFP. “It is a completely surreal and terrible situation.”

The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) said the disaster was a “quick clay slide” of approximately 300m by 800m.

Quick clay is a sort of clay found in Norway and Sweden that can collapse and turn to fluid when overstressed.

The authorities have banned all aircraft from the disaster area until 3pm Monday as they conduct aerial searches.

Norwegian rescue workers are being helped by colleagues from Sweden.

Visiting the site last week, Prime Minister Erna Solberg described it as one of the biggest landslides the country had ever experienced. – AFP, January 2, 2021