Before dawn, a village vanished
Just after 3 a.m. on May 24, a wall of earth tore through Mulitaka in Papua New Guinea’s Enga Province and erased a village in minutes. Most people were asleep. Homes, gardens, and footpaths disappeared under a mass of rock and mud several meters deep. The official death toll stands at 670, but senior officials say the real number may be far higher—potentially more than 2,000—because entire family compounds were swallowed whole and dozens of hamlets fed by the same slopes were hit.
The disaster struck the Maip Muritaka Rural Local Level Government area, a rugged highland belt where roads cling to ridgelines and phone signals drop without warning. By June 7, crews had recovered only 12 bodies. That’s not for lack of effort. The ground is still moving, the debris is unstable, and heavy machinery struggles to operate on slopes that could give way again. Search teams are often forced to dig by hand, listening for faint sounds that rarely come.
More than 7,800 people have been displaced, according to local authorities who have set up makeshift shelters on higher ground. Food, clean water, and shelter materials are short. People who escaped the slide with nothing but the clothes they wore now line up for tarpaulins and rice. The question no one wants to ask out loud hangs over the valley: how many of the missing can still be found?
Two suspected triggers stand out. Weeks of heavy rain soaked the already fragile slopes, and the area has long seen small-scale gold mining that can undercut hillsides and weaken natural drainage. A magnitude 4.5 earthquake hit about six days earlier and more than 100 kilometers away at depth, but the Red Cross said there was no evidence linking that quake to the collapse here. What happened in Mulitaka fits a familiar pattern for the highlands: saturated ground, steep terrain, and sudden failure.
Prime Minister James Marape called the slide a symptom of climate stress on a mountainous nation that depends on the land for food and income. In recent years, highland districts have reported more intense downpours that arrive without warning, break creek banks, and chew into slopes. Add patchy land management and unregulated hillside digging, and you get a recipe for disasters that multiply with rain.
The village that vanished was not alone. In 2024, Papua New Guinea suffered a string of deadly slides before Mulitaka. Fourteen died in April; 21 in another slide a month earlier. This run of events has exposed how fragile communities are when early warnings don’t reach them, roads wash out, and help takes days to arrive.
Access remains the biggest obstacle. The main road into the impact zone has been repeatedly blocked by boulders and mud, and sections of the track disappear beneath the slide. Helicopters can land on small pads, but bad weather pins them to the ground. When the rain returns, teams pull back to safe points and wait. Aid convoys snake in when they can, bringing fuel, shovels, tarpaulins, water purification tablets, and body bags.
The recovery effort is a patchwork of community volunteers, provincial authorities, the Papua New Guinea Defence Force, and international responders. Local youth often reach the worst-hit clusters first, cutting paths with machetes, guiding older residents to safety, and marking dangerous cracks with branches and cloth. Engineers are placing markers to see if the ground is still creeping. Geologists warn that a second collapse is possible if water keeps pooling within the debris.
Counting the dead is painfully slow. Many families lack formal records. People migrate in and out of the area to work informal mining sites; visitors stay with relatives for weeks or months. When a disaster hits at night, household lists don’t match who was actually home. With burial depths measured in meters, recovering bodies becomes a long, risky job that demands careful excavation and constant watch for new cracks.
Public health risks rise by the day. Bodies trapped under mud are a direct concern, but the bigger threat is contaminated water. Springs and pipes were severed and now seep through tainted soil. Latrines washed out. Diarrheal disease, including cholera and dysentery, can spread fast in crowded shelters without proper sanitation. Standing water draws mosquitoes, pushing up malaria risk. Health teams are setting up vaccination points, distributing oral rehydration salts and chlorine tablets, and isolating suspected cases in tents away from the main camps.
Aid groups say the immediate priorities are clear: safe water, emergency shelter, basic healthcare, and protection for vulnerable people. That includes pregnant women, children, and elders who need consistent medicine. Lighting and patrols inside camps reduce risks of gender-based violence. Cash support helps families buy what they actually need from nearby markets that are still operating. But funding is tight, and long supply lines in the highlands drive up costs.
For many survivors, the land itself is the loss. People garden on terraces cut by their grandparents. Coffee and sweet potato plots hold not just food, but savings. When a slope fails, it wipes out homes, harvests, and seed stock. Even if people are relocated—and that is a hard, often emotional decision—rebuilding livelihoods can take years. Schools and health posts that went down in the slide will need new sites and fresh materials hauled in piece by piece.
Officials are urging patience as they balance urgency against safety. More excavators will help only if the ground stops shifting. Drones and satellite images are being used to map the slide’s footprint and locate likely clusters of buried homes. The goal is to target digging where the chances of recovery are highest and the risks of a second collapse are lowest.
Why does this keep happening? Start with geography. Enga sits high, its ridges cut by deep valleys. The soils are young and easily weathered. When heavy rain comes, water rushes downslope, undercutting paths and eating through gardens. Where trees have been cleared or streams diverted, hillsides lose the roots and drainage that hold them together. Mining—especially where tunnels and pits are dug without engineering—adds voids and channels that can turn the ground into a sponge.
Climate adds pressure. Warmer air holds more moisture. When storms form in the tropics, they can drop more rain in shorter bursts. Researchers across the Pacific have tracked a rise in extreme rainfall days over recent decades. In highlands that already sit on the edge, those bursts are often the last straw. You don’t need a cyclone; an overnight deluge is enough.
Preparedness is the gap officials say they want to close fast. Simple tools save lives: hazard maps that mark out high-risk slopes; community drills that teach people to move to ridgelines when rain thresholds are crossed; text alerts that still work when the power goes out. Radios and loudhailers matter in places where mobile coverage is patchy. Retaining vegetation, digging proper drainage, and banning digging on certain slopes are not expensive steps—but they need enforcement and trusted local leadership.
Relocation is on the table, and it won’t be easy. Land in the highlands is tied to clans and ancestry. Moving a village can mean complex negotiations that take time, even when the danger is obvious. Authorities say any relocation plan has to come with land agreements, new water sources, support for gardens, and strong roads so people can reach markets. Temporary camps are not a long-term solution.
Relief agencies stress that local knowledge should lead. People here know where the ground sounds hollow after rain, which creeks change color before a slide, which slopes crack first. Turning that knowledge into early warnings—and backing it with engineers and meteorologists—can close the gap between danger and evacuation. Schools can be hubs for drills and basic first aid. Churches and community halls can store tarps, ropes, and radios.
Back in Mulitaka, the search goes on in narrow windows between squalls. Teams mark grids in the mud and work methodically. Families stand at the edges with scarves over their mouths, hoping for news and bracing for it at the same time. Every recovered body is carried out with care, names are added to lists, and the long task of honoring the dead and caring for the living continues.
What this tragedy exposed is bigger than one slide. It’s about how a highland society, stretched by rain, fragile slopes, and thin services, copes with shocks that are getting harder to predict and faster to strike. The measures that can make a difference—clean water, sturdier slopes, smarter warnings—are clear. The challenge now is scale, money, and the will to act before the next hillside gives way.
Why this matters beyond Enga
Small island and mountain nations face similar risks: extreme rain, steep terrain, and settlements built where flat land exists, not where it’s safest. Papua New Guinea is a stark example. Disasters don’t just kill; they reverse years of progress in health, schooling, and incomes. When landslides cut a single road, entire districts can be cut off from clinics and markets for weeks, pushing up prices and pushing families into deeper hardship.
Regional partners have offered support, and more will be needed for months, not just days. Heavy equipment, fuel, tents, water systems, and health staff are the basics. Technical help—geotechnical surveys, hazard mapping, and slope stabilization—can set a safer path for rebuilding. Local leaders say the real test will come when cameras leave. Will the slow work of safer housing sites, replanting, and drainage still get done?
For now, Mulitaka’s name is a byword for loss. It also marks a turning point. If this Papua New Guinea landslide forces broader changes in how highland villages are built, watered, warned, and protected, lives can be saved the next time clouds stack over Enga’s ridges and the rain comes hard in the dark.
