Harlyne Joku/Port Moresby
Torrential rains and landslides in Papua New Guinea have caused about two dozen deaths over the past week while king tides have brought on fresh water and food shortages for thousands of people in coastal areas, officials said.
Some 50,000 people in Gulf province are facing the aftermath of unusually high tides that flooded tens of coastal and downstream estuary villages and inundated staple crops such as breadfruit, its governor Chris Haiveta told BenarNews on Thursday.
Relief supplies, said Haiveta, have started reaching affected villages where clean water is now scarce.
“Communities are being asked to be resilient as always and will need fresh water, health and emergency food supplies in the interim,” he said.
The National Disaster Centre’s acting director Lusete Man on Thursday said at least 23 people had died in highlands and northern provinces after flooding and landslides in the past week.
Papua New Guinea, the most populous Pacific island country, has great expanses of rugged mountainous territory that combined with limited government resources and insufficient roads and airports, makes responding to frequent natural disasters a challenge. It is also prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Mary Wia, who was organizing aid donations for Gulf province from Papua New Guinea’s capital Port Moresby, said some supplies had reached one of the affected villages on Thursday and would be distributed to others.
“We the Gulf community must organize to help our people in need at this time of disaster,” said Wia, who is originally from Gulf province.
In the Gumine district of Simbu province, a family was buried alive when a landslide engulfed their home, according to district administrator Francis Dion Kil.
“They were inside their house, in their family house and are still buried,” Kil said in an interview Wednesday with Radio New Zealand. “The retrieving process will soon begin to remove the mud and locate the bodies.”
Emmanuel Xavier, a policy advisor to the Gulf province government, said a woman and her child were killed in a landslide earlier this week in the Kaintiba area.
“The king tides and floods we are experiencing are throughout the country,” he told BenarNews.
“Our response is collective. Communities and government making a collective effort to manage the situation as best as we can to prevent loss of lives and livelihoods.”
The National Disaster Office and provincial government had carried out an aerial survey of coastal and inland areas in the province to assess the full extent of the disaster, he said.
Fiji is also suffering extensive flooding this week that has closed all schools and damaged property, according to Fijian government statements.
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