Landslide hits residential area

TEN people were injured, one of them critically, and 15 people remained unaccounted for after a landslide in southern Norway swept away more than a dozen buildings early yesterday, police said.

The landslide struck a residential area in the municipality of Gjerdrum, about 30 km north of the capital, Oslo. Police said about 700 people had been evacuated from the area.

Photos of the site showed a large crater with destroyed buildings at the bottom of it. Other buildings hung on the edges of the crater, TV footage showed. Two more houses collapsed into the crater.

“It is a catastrophe,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg said. “There could be people trapped... but at the same time we can’t be sure because it is the New Year’s holiday, which means people could be elsewhere.”

Helicopters continued to hover over the area as night fell, at times lowering emergency responders towards the debris of collapsed houses. Police said rescue operations would continue today.

Masses of earth are still moving in what has been one of the largest clay slides in recent Norwegian history, Torild Hofshagen, the regional head of the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate.