An aerial view of a landslide area in Ask, Gjerdrum municipality, Norway, taken on 1 January 2020. Rescuers found one body on Friday, two days after a landslide in southern Norway swept away at least nine buildings, police said, with nine people still missing. Photo: Jaran Wasrud / NTB / The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate / REUTERS
An aerial view of a landslide area in Ask, Gjerdrum municipality, Norway, taken on 1 January 2020. Rescuers found one body on Friday, two days after a landslide in southern Norway swept away at least nine buildings, police said, with nine people still missing. Photo: Jaran Wasrud / NTB / The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate / REUTERS

By Gwladys Fouche
1 January 2021

OSLO (Reuters) – Rescuers found one body on Friday, two days after a landslide in southern Norway swept away at least nine buildings, police said, with nine people still missing.

Another 10 people were injured after Wednesday’s landslide in the residential area in the Gjerdrum municipality, about 30 km (19 miles) north of the capital, Oslo.

“One person has been found. Unfortunately this person is confirmed dead,” the head of the police operation at the site, Roy Alkvist, told reporters, declining to give any details on the person.

Emergency workers are continuing their search in what Bjoern Nuland, head of the health team at the site, said was still a rescue operation. A search-and-rescue team from neighbouring Sweden was assisting.

Some 1,000 people have so far been evacuated from Gjerdrum, including 46 people from an area 2 km (1.2 miles) away from the landslide, after cracks were observed in the ground. [more]

Rescuers find body after landslide in Norway

Aerial view from a rescue helicopter over the area of a landslide in the village Ask, Gjerdrum municipality, Norway, 30 December 2020. Photo: NTB / Norwegian Rescue Service
Aerial view from a rescue helicopter over the area of a landslide in the village Ask, Gjerdrum municipality, Norway, 30 December 2020. Photo: NTB / Norwegian Rescue Service

Norway’s largest landslide in recent history buries homes and leaves a dozen people unaccounted for

A major landslide destroyed homes overnight in a village in Norway close to the capital Oslo, leaving 12 people unaccounted for and 10 injured, police and local media said.

Video footage from the scene showed a whole hillside had collapsed in Ask, in the municipality of Gjerdrum, 25 kilometres northeast of the capital.

Homes were left crushed and buried in dark mud.

Snow fell throughout the morning as the emergency services evacuated the injured and attempted to secure those homes still standing.

Some houses had been left teetering on the edge of the crater left behind by the slide, with a few falling over the edge as the day went on.

Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who travelled to the village of around 1,000 people on Wednesday, described the landslide as “one of the largest” the country had seen.

“It’s a dramatic experience to be here,” Ms Solberg told reporters, expressing particular concern for those still missing.

“The situation is still so unstable with the mud that it’s not yet possible to do anything other than helicopter rescues,” she added.

Norwegian media said that 700 people had been evacuated from their homes, and the municipality warned as many as 1,500 could need to leave the region out of safety concerns. [more]

Norway’s largest landslide in recent history buries homes and leaves a dozen people unaccounted for