Rescuers used helicopters, drones and dogs on Thursday to scan the unstable terrain the day after a major landslide destroyed houses in a village near the Norwegian capital Oslo. At least 10 people had not yet been identified and 10 others were injured, local officials said.
An entire hill collapsed Wednesday night in Ask, in Gjerdrum, 15 miles northeast of the capital. The houses were crushed and buried in dense, dark clay, which was still too unstable on Thursday for rescuers to access on foot, Reuters news agency reported.
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Temperatures under frost and snow have made efforts to support the remaining structures and to find the lack even more difficult, with some houses remaining crumpled on the edge of the crater created by the slide. Several buildings fell over the edge on Wednesday.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who traveled to the village of about 1,000 people on Wednesday, described the landslide as “one of the largest” the country has ever seen.
“It’s a dramatic experience to be here,” Solberg told reporters, expressing deep concern for those still missing.
“The situation is still so unstable with the mud that it is not yet possible to do anything but rescue the helicopters,” she added.
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Norwegian media said 700 people had been evacuated from their homes, and the municipality warned that 1,500 may need to leave the region for safety reasons.
“We are still looking for survivors,” Roger Pettersen, the site’s chief of police, told Reuters, adding that children and adults were among those still missing.
Police said 10 people were injured and one was transferred to Oslo with serious injuries.
Pettersen said Wednesday that emergency calls had arrived from people saying all their homes were moving in with them. Overnight helicopters used heat scanning technology to search for people and landed several rescuers on structures as part of their efforts.
“There are dramatic reports and the situation is serious,” Pettersen said.
According to the Norwegian Directorate of Water and Energy Resources (NVE), what happened was the so-called “rapid clay landslide” of about 328 to 766 meters.
“This is the largest landslide in Norway, given the number of houses involved and the number of evacuees,” NVE spokeswoman Laila Hoivik told AFP.
Rapid clay is a type of clay found in Norway and Sweden that can collapse and turn into fluid when overloaded.
“The area was inspected earlier and is known to contain fast clay. The possibility of similar large slides in the area is low at the moment,” Hoivik said.
Reuters quoted Norwegian broadcaster TV2 as saying that a 2005 geological survey detected clay and considered the area unsuitable for residential development, but that new homes were built on the ground only a few years later.
The King of Norway, Harald, said in a rare public statement that the accident “made a deep impression” on him.
“My thoughts are with all those affected, the injured, those who have lost their homes and are now living in fear and uncertainty about the full extent of the disaster,” he said.