Residents of a small village in Northern Norway have been evacuated after rocks started falling from the mountainside towering over their farm.On Friday, geologists feared the unstable slopes of the mountain known as Oksfjellet would slide during the course of the day.
“Oh, here comes a whole mass of stone,” Siv Nina Myrvoll, who has raised goats on the farm in Kåfjord, exclaimed to state broadcaster NRK. “We can’t see anything, but we can hear big stones crashing down now.”
Clouds veiled the mountaintops on Friday where experts expect that as much as 12,000 cubic meters of mountainside will give way. Myrvoll’s farm in the county of Nord-Troms was evacuated earlier last month and her family’s goats sent to slaughter.
The spectacularly scenic area, just across the fjord from the famed Lyngen Alps, has been monitored closely because of its instability. “We expect a major slide soon,” Lars Harald Blikra, chief geologist at state waterways agency NVE, told NRK Friday morning.
Geologists have also been monitoring other unstable mountainsides around Norway, included Mannen in Romsdal and the steep slopes leading into the Geirangerfjord, which recently were depicted in a disaster movie about a rockslide that sets off a tsunami.
newsinenglish.no staff
