On 26 February 2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit parts of Papua New Guinea. Cracks in the earth now mark the ground throughout the Highlands, seriously impacting people’s access to basic services.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Hans Maesen
Broken power lines lay across damaged roads, inhibiting access to remote communities and affecting crucial power supply to local health care centres and schools.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Hans Maesen
Unable to return to their classrooms, students throughout the region must now fit into large local mess halls as an alternative space, while they wait for their schools to be rebuilt.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Albert Madrazo
A church lays flattened, damaged from the earthquake, in Sawmill, Nipa Kutubu District.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Albert Madrazo
Walls torn from ceilings, leaving belongings damaged and exposed, have become a familiar scene throughout the Highlands.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Reuben Tabel
Over the past months, we have been helping affected communities, by providing shelter along with emergency household kits to 16,000 displaced people.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Reuben Tabel
A group of women wait at Lil Care Centre in Nipa district to receive aid.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Albert Madrazo
“The huge landslide in Yalanda village killed six people, while two were air-lifted to the hospital. Continuous tremors are making people unstable, worried, and panicked, because this was the first time we have experienced something like this.”
- Richard Don, a community leader
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Albert Madrazo
Families from Yalanda village at a gravesite where their loved ones were buried. Clothes of the deceased hang over the fence surrounding the graves used as symbols of remembrance.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Albert Madrazo
Walking over what was once their village, families from Yalanda show us the damage that was left behind.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Albert Madrazo
A Red Cross volunteer talks with two widows whose husbands were both killed in a landslide following the earthquake.
CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Hans Maesen
In a bid to help health care centres become functional again, we have installed water harvesters and replaced tanks to ensure that people have access to clean water.
On 26 February 2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit parts of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, significantly affecting the Southern Highlands and Hela Provinces. Months after the devastating natural disaster, people from the affected communities are still in need of assistance. Clean water and shelter are some of the most pressing challenges people are facing within these communities as they work to rebuild what was lost and regain their self-reliance.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Papua New Guinea Red Cross Society (PNGRCS) have been working with the Highland people to assist in the rebuilding and rehabilitation of their communities.
