A landslide buried a village at 3 a.m. Could it have been predicted?
SYDNEY—After a landslide hit Papua New Guinea’s highlands in the middle of the night last month, locals used spades, sticks and their bare hands to clear debris that authorities say buried people while they slept. Half a world away, Dan Shugar, an associate professor at the University of Calgary who studies landslides, wondered whether scientific methods could have detected the impending disaster and helped to prevent the loss of life. Looking at historical satellite imagery, Shugar found evidence of what appeared to be a small landslide in the same location in January 2022, and then an even smaller one in the days before the catastrophic collapse.
Minor landslides are common in mountainous areas and don’t always lead to disaster. But two small landslides over the previous couple of years, Shugar said, is “a warning that maybe something bigger was going to happen." Papua New Guinea, with high rainfall, hilly terrain and frequent earthquakes, is prone to landslides. But the May 24 event made headlines around the world after authorities estimated that hundreds of people, perhaps even 2,000, were killed.
Some experts have questioned the accuracy of the government’s death-toll estimate based on the size of the landslide—which covered about 22 acres—and the fact that it struck a rural area rather than a densely populated city. Papua New Guinea hasn’t had a reliable census for years, so it is difficult to determine the size of the local population with accuracy. Officials with Papua New Guinea’s National Disaster Centre couldn’t be reached for comment on the death toll estimates and landslide monitoring efforts.
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