15year-old Boy Loses Entire Family in Hela Earthquake

Taunda Mope,15yr old Grade 4 student who lost his parents and four siblings along with four other relatives to the earthquake in Hela province.

Taunda Mope, a grade 4 student at Tango Primary School in Magarima was on his way to his family for the weekend when the 7.5 magnitude earthquake shook his Timu village in Hela province in the early hours of Monday 26th February 2018.

Taunda arrived at his village on Tuesday morning only to found out that his village has been destroyed by the earthquake.

His family home was nowhere to be seen.
Debris including rocks and trees have covered more than 20 houses, gardens and hamlets belonging to his Kandele tribe.

His parents including four of his siblings were among eleven poeple that were buried under the debris caused by landslips.

The burial site of the four recovered bodies at Limu village.

"It was around 4am in the morning when we felt the earthquake, it was the time of the morning that everyone was fast asleep," recalls Joel Wai a relative to Taunda.

"We could here the landslide approaching along with rocks and trees, we started running out in the dark in fear of our lives."

Soon afterwards, the villagers started calling out to their family members in the dark. Dawn was breaking and they could hardly hear birds chirping or even see their pigs in sight. All their homes have vanished after the landslip.

Most of the people who were buried in the landslip were women, young children and two babies.

Four bodies out of the initial eleven have been retrieved from the disaster site. This includes a young mother and her two children (ages 2 and 5years) and another 15year old girl.

Local villagers are doing their best to retrieve the seven bodies. A week has gone and they are still hoping to find them among the debris.

"We cannot leave this place, even there are dangers that the village is likely to be buried if the next earthquake or landslide occurs. We have lost our homes, our gardens, pigs and family members, we are willing to die with them if don't locate their bodies sooner."

Taunda couldn't speak in Tok Pisin, but as translated to me, he has no hope of staying back in the village. He purposely came home to see his parents to sort out his school fees, but with their untimely death he is in a confusion state on who will assist him.

Limu is one of several villages in the Hulai LLG of Komo-Magarima. The LNG Gas pipeline runs a few kilometres from the village, but there are no schools, clinics, communication towers or even a road connecting them to the provincial capital Tari.

It's neigbouring Homapawa village has also confirmed 10 deaths and are in dire need for relief assistance.

Today the Taunda and his 674 tribesmen and women are camping at their local church building. The only building in the village that was not destroyed by the disaster.

There are in dire need of food, fresh drinking water, clothes and shelter. The aftershocks brings keeps them up everyday and night as they wait on when relief supply and support will reach them.