Norway landslide: Swedes join search for 10 missing in Ask ravine
- Published
Swedish rescuers and Norwegian dog handlers are preparing a risky ground search for 10 people missing after a hillside collapsed in Norway.
It is snowing heavily in Ask, a village 25km (15 miles) north-east of the capital Oslo, where homes toppled into a giant chasm caused by flowing mud.
Police commander Roy Alkvist said one or two houses in the chasm appeared safe for rescuers to potentially enter.
Helicopters have been searching the scene of Wednesday's landslide.
A missing dog was rescued on Thursday.
In Friday's operation the eight Swedish rescuers and their Norwegian colleagues plan to use an army vehicle called a "paver", which has a giant steel bridge on which rescuers can move, Norway's Aftenposten daily reports.
It is a race against time, as the rescuers also have few hours of daylight in the Norwegian winter.
About 1,000 people have been evacuated from Gjerdrum county, which contains Ask village.
Rescuers have so far used drones and helicopters with heat-seeking cameras to look for signs of life beneath the debris.
More than 30 homes have been destroyed, but officials say more could be lost as the edges of the crater left by the landslide are still breaking away.
The conditions have proved challenging, with temperatures dropping to -1C (30F) and the clay ground proving too unstable for emergency workers to walk on.
The landslide began early on Wednesday, with residents calling emergency services and telling them that their houses were moving, police said.
"There were two massive tremors that lasted for a long while and I assumed it was snow being cleared or something like that," Oeystein Gjerdrum, 68, told broadcaster NRK.
"Then the power suddenly went out, and a neighbour came to the door and said we needed to evacuate, so I woke up my three grandchildren and told them to get dressed quickly."
A spokeswoman for the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) told AFP that the landslide was a so-called "quick clay slide" measuring about 300m by 700m (985ft by 2,300ft).
"This is the largest landslide in recent times in Norway, considering the number of houses involved and the number of evacuees," Laila Hoivik said.
Quick clay is a kind of clay found in Norway and Sweden that can collapse and become fluid when it comes under stress.
Broadcaster NRK said heavy rainfall may have made the soil unstable, but questions have since emerged over why construction was permitted in the area.
A 2005 geological survey labelled the area as at high risk of landslides, according to a report seen by the broadcaster TV2. Despite this, the homes were built three years later in 2008.