Crews continue to search for survivors in Norway landslide
Rescuers have recovered the bodies of seven people killed in a landslide in Norway last week, and they are still looking for survivors, police said Monday.
Three people remained missing after the disaster in the village of Ask, about 30 miles northeast of Oslo, police said. Officials said the landslide on Wednesday, which led to the evacuation of people fromthe area, was related to quick clay, which can collapse into a liquid state when overloaded.
“We are in despair over the terrible and tragic outcome of this slide,” Anders Ostensen, the mayor of Gjerdrum, the local municipality that includes Ask, said Monday. “The situation is still unreal to us, but we are trying to turn things around, and we’ve started the work of trying to get back to normality.”
About 1,000 people were evacuated from Ask after clay ground in the area collapsed, swallowing at least seven homes in flows of mud and injuring 10 people.
The military and firefighters are helping with rescue efforts, which have been complicated by short days with limited daylight, cold weather and the difficulty of navigating the clay, which remains unstable in places.
Six of the victims, whose bodies were recovered on Friday and in the past few days, have been identified. They are Eirik Gronolen, 31, Lisbeth Neraas, 54 and her son Marius Brustad, 29, and Bjorn-Ivar Grymyr Jansen, 40, Charlot Grymyr Jansen, 31, and their 2-year-old daughter, Alma Grymyr Jansen.
One body found has not yet been named. Still missing are three others.
King Harald V and Queen Sonja on Sunday visited the site of the landslide and met rescue personnel, local volunteers and survivors. “I’m having trouble finding something to say, because it’s absolutely horrible,” King Harald said.
As of Monday, it was unclear precisely what caused the clay to collapse.