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One person has been found dead in the landslide area in the town of Ask in Romerike. Nine to go.
– We get names, we get photographs and the darker side of the tragedy hits us, Gjerdrum Mayor Anders Østensen (Labor Party) told Dagbladet on Friday night.
At that time, the police had come out shortly before with the names of the missing, who are between 69 and two years old.
With every hour that passes, the odds of finding survivors in the landslide area get worse.
For a mayor in pain, it’s about holding the municipality together. Østensen tells the local newspaper Romerikes Blad about a disaster from which peace is not possible.
– The impressions are so many, all the time. It hurts a lot, he says.
When the newspaper reporter asks if the mayor believes there are survivors in the area of the landslide, he replies:
– Personally, I think hope is fading a lot. Another miracle is needed.
– Tragic
During a press conference on Saturday at 12 noon, the Chief of Police of the Eastern Police District, Ida Melbo Øystese, makes it clear that the question of this hope is absolutely central.
– This is a tragic event. Of course, it is very bad for those who miss their near and dear ones, he says and adds:
Start the search in the landslide zone: – Risky action
– It impresses me and all my colleagues a lot.
The police chief emphasizes that the most important job for the police and rescue teams now is to do everything possible to find survivors. However, he thinks it is understandable that they wonder how long it is possible to hope.
– How long is it possible to find survivors in these demanding conditions? he asks rhetorically, before continuing:
– The forces of nature are not on our side. Time is not on our side.
– Not there now
Øystese says that work is continually being done to analyze and evaluate these questions. The central dilemma, from a medical point of view, is that you can survive for several days if you have access to air, he says.
– If there is an air pocket, it can still live. At the same time, we know that landslides have a very liquid mass. There are great forces in the swing, which means there are not as many air pockets in such landslides.
However, rescue teams see that there are still buildings with partially intact building mass.
– There we can think that there are air pockets. This is what we are working on now, Øystese says.
The police chief says it is her job, through work on the systems and routines for rescue work on this scale, to make the decision on when the police believe there is no longer any hope of finding survivors.
– We are not there now. And it is very important for me to emphasize that.
– Risky action
However, the message from the rescue teams is clear:
These are lost
– We’re still looking for survivors.
Police still describe the search operation as a rescue operation. On Saturday, the leader of the police task force at the scene, Roy Alkvist, repeated the message that they hope to find survivors.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, police and search teams began new searches of the landslide area in Gjerdrum.
– This is a job that involves some form of risk. The action itself is risky, said the leader of the police task at the scene, Roy Alkvist, during a news conference Saturday morning.
He stated that conditions in the landslide zone are the same as on Friday.
– Hard to say
The operational leader of the fire teams, Geir Sønderål, told Dagbladet on Friday night that there are several reasons why emergency services still believe in finding some of the missing alive.
Until crews receive other medical evaluations or the area of the landslide is searched thoroughly enough, the state will not switch to searching for suspected dead.
– We work all the time on the basis that we will find survivors, according to assessments of the medical device. Airbags can increase your chances of survival. This can be formed by constructions that create a pocket where the person can be, says Sønderål and continues:
– It is difficult to say what should save them, but construction masses have been captured. There may be rooms that are intact, where people may have stayed. That is the hope we have, from my point of view.
Sønderål stated that around 30 people were in the area of the landslide and conducted a search on Friday.
