Just days after being allowed to return home, Norwegians living at the foot of the country’s most unstable mountain Mannen had to pack up and leave again. State authorities ordered a new evacuation after fearing a new landslide.
The national agency monitoring the mountain (NVE) raised the danger level back up to rødt (red) on Sunday. That forced yet another evacuation, the second in less than a week, and the closure Sunday morning of the popular train line through the valley below.
“We’ve had a lot of stones rolling down the mountainside, and we’ve had signs of movement farther down it as well,” Lars Harald Blikra of NVE told state broadcaster NRK. This time the instability was recorded within Veslemannen, part of the range next to Mannen itself.
The danger level had been reduced to gold from orange and red last week, when unusually cold weather and snow actually helped stabilize the mountainside. Then temperatures rose, and snowmelt on Friday was being blamed for increasing movement within the mountain’s mass.
Police allowed one departure of the train line Raumabanen to depart Dombås and head for the end of the line at Åndalsnes. Officials would be constantly evaluating the safety of running the train line as they faced an unpredictable summer ahead.
newsinenglish.no staff
