The emergency phone call was made to Mission Aviation Fellowship’s Programme Safety Manager.
‘The call,’ Dom Sant said, ‘asked me to take the lead on mapping communities that were affected by the earthquake that struck Markham Valley in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea.’
The quake, which registered 7.6 on the Richter scale, left at least 21 people dead and 30 injured, according to PNG’s Disaster Management Team, with many more missing or buried under landslides.
As soon as the weather conditions permitted, MAF aircraft made an aerial survey, enabling the various disaster response agencies to assess the needs of those most affected by the earthquake.
Landslides had damaged the regional power grid – causing a bush fire – and wrecked roads, highways, internet cables and medical facilities.
Schools, churches, bridges, water sources and cash-crop gardens were also affected, with the quake destroying or damaging more than 1,076 permanent, semi-permanent and traditional houses in Morobe, Madang and Eastern Highlands. The Ramu hydropower station at Kainantu was also damaged, leading to a complete power outage across Madang and Morobe provinces.
The needs revealed by the survey included emergency shelter, clean water, bedding, and basic kitchen and household items.
Although the remotest and most mountainous areas were impossible to reach by road, MAF pilots were able to deliver 117kg of food from Goroka to Mibu.
At the University of Goroka, students had to stay with relatives or in classrooms due to the seven-storey dormitory building sustaining large cracks.
Five of the students were injured and had to be taken to hospital, with 1,600 resident students having to be housed in classrooms and nearby villages. Lessons were suspended for two weeks.
The day after the emergency phone call, MAF’s missionary pilots transported eight people, some of them badly injured by the landslides. One victim had been working in his garden when a broken tree branch punctured his torso. ‘This is the first disaster response I’ve supported since moving to PNG in January,’ commented Dom Sant, ‘I hope it will be my last.’
