State highway officials have confirmed that there may be a connection between construction of the new E39 highway in Trøndelag and a deadly landslide Friday evening. Roadwork resumed on Monday, however, after geologists claimed it was now safe.
“They’ve gone through the entire construction area Saturday and Sunday and think it’s safe to start up again,” Ove Nesje of Statens vegvesen told state broadcaster NRK.
Their examination came after a landslide destroyed a home just downhill from where the new highway is being built along the Valsøyfjord at Heim in Trøndelag. The slide, which occurred in an area where there hadn’t been slides before, killed one of the home’s occupants and sent six others to hospital including a two-year-old girl.
The victim was identified during the weekend as 85-year-old Bjørg Hendset, who had friends and relatives visiting when the slide crashed into her home. They included her son, who remained at St Olavs Hospital in Trondheim on Monday, and her great-granddaughter, who was found alive in the rubble of the home. Local Mayor Odd Jarle Svanem told NRK that rescue workers believe the elder Hendset tried to protect the two-year-old: “It was a heroic end to her life, thinking about others.”
Svanem confirmed that some of those living in the area are now uneasy while roadwork proceeds, and that they’d be offered alternative housing until the construction is complete.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
