Under a mountain, a remote community quietly slept. Then a sudden landslide levelled a village.
Eddlyn Yaki and her husband Toby were sleeping in their home in Papua New Guinea's Enga province when the sound of a large crack tore through their room, waking them suddenly.
It was 2am and the couple feared something terrible had happened.
They got out of their beds and rushed to a nearby pub to see if anyone knew what had caused the almighty sound.
But before they could find answers, tragedy struck.
Because that crack may have been the first sign of the avalanche of stone that would forge a destructive path towards the village below.
Eddlyn couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
She asked Toby to get their children and bring them to a relative’s house for the night, but he said he was cold and wanted to go home to sleep.
It was the last time she saw him alive.
After parting ways, Eddlyn arrived at the pub to discover everyone had fled.
They scattered in all directions as the boulders tumbled down, while she took shelter at a nearby health clinic until the next morning.
As the sun rose over her village, she realised her husband, three children and father had all been killed.
"In the morning, I came back and saw that the stones had covered the area," she said.
"The ones who fled were told to check for their families.
"But my family didn't come out."
On Sunday, a funeral for five locals killed in the tragedy was held on the picturesqueside of a nearby mountain.
Eddlyn's father was among those laid to rest.
Men dug through the earth to create graves in the hot sun, while women sat on the ground and held each other.
The group sang traditional mourning songs, the haunting notes reverberating through the valley.
Now, Eddlyn wonders what the future holds for her with her family gone.
In Mulitaka, land is passed down from fathers to sons and is rarely bought or sold.
With many buildings now buried under rock and debris, locals left homeless by the disaster don't know if they will be able to resettle.
Eddlynhas been staying at a care centre set up for refugees about 500 metres from the landslide site.
While she's grateful for the aid that is being provided, she knows it won't last forever.
"What sort of help will they give me? Where will I be settled?" she said.
"I need to know this because I lost my entire family. I am the only survivor."
As she and others bury their dead and recover from what could be the worst landslide in the island's history, they are plagued by unanswered questions about the landslide.
There is uncertainty over what they will do and where they will go, along with confusion about how this happened.
But what is most concerning to those at the centre of the tragedy is the very real risk it could happen again.
An 'unstable' slope
Papua New Guinea is only 150 kilometres away from Australia's mainland.
In the country's centre, the Highlands sits along a mountainous spine that stretches from west to east, dissecting the Momase from the southern regions.
Slightly to the north lies the rugged Enga Province, a resource-rich parcel of land pockmarked by sharp peaks and steep troughs.
At Enga’s centre is Yambali village, which is also known as Maip, one of many communities in the Maip Mulitakagovernment area.
And this green shape shows the scale of the avalanche of boulders, debris and soil that moved towards it.
A draft internal report by Papua New Guinea's mining and geohazards department, obtained by the ABC, identifies some of the elements that likely played a role in the Yambali landslide.
The presence of water in the rock mass and the angle of the mountain slope are among the causes listed.
An earthquake was ruled out as a possible factor, but the report said the rockfall took place in an area reported to be "very unstable" and "subject to continuous slumping and sliding".
Rocks are typically held in place with friction, the weight supported by the material below it.
But when this disappears, either because the soil has loosened or due to fractures in the rock underneath, it can give way.
What may have started off as zones of weakness in the structure caused by the presence of water, eventually fragmented into large boulders, triggering an avalanche event.
"They are exceptionally violent events," Professor Dave Petley, a landslide expert and vice chancellor at the University of Hull,told the ABC.
The landslide that struck Enga was one of PNG's deadliest natural disasters.
And in its aftermath, authorities have warned of the danger of another one occurring, with large cracks in the adjacent mountainside worsening over the past couple of days.
Given the risks, the draft report warns that the highland community needs to be urgently cleared of people.
It goes on to say there is a very high likelihood of further landslides in the immediate future, ruling out the possibility of the area being rehabilitated and resettled.
"This area has to be declared a no-go-zone," it states.
The PNG Defence Force is already evacuating the area and asking locals to stop using the zone as a thoroughfare.
While the country has experienced catastrophic events before, Professor Petley said 2024 has been a "really exceptional" year for rockfalls.
So far, there have been 11 major fatal landslides across the country, a phenomenon which he says is "really, really unusual".
"Since we started [tracking landslides] in 2004, we've not seen a year like this," he said.
"2024 does stand out, even before this event, as a really exceptional year in Papua New Guinea."
PNG is home to one of the wettest climates in the world, with its monsoon season starting in December and continuing through to March.
Annual rainfall in the Yambali area typically exceeds around 2,600 millimetres, but the internal report found the months of January and May this year recorded "substantial amounts".
The highest rainfall figure was recorded 10 days prior to the landslide.
"It is an El Nino year and Papua New Guinea has been suffering really extreme rainfall for a number of months, which is probably the underlying factor that's triggered this event," Professor Petley said.
As the government grapples with how to provide help to the remote area, nearby communities are coming to terms with the scale of their loss.
Life in the aftermath
Earthquakes, droughts, floods, landslides and even volcanoes have wreaked havoc on PNG communities and shaped how it responds to disasters.
In 1937, at least 500 people died from an eruption of the volcanoes surrounding Rabaul, while another one in 1994 prompted the entire island to be evacuated.
Four years later, a tsunami triggered by two earthquakes crashed into a 30-kilometre stretch of PNG's coast washing away entire villages.
Authorities described the event as a "wake up call" for its disaster management system, prompting more investment in risk mitigation and preparedness.
But even now, surviving a natural disaster and recovering from its aftermath depends on where you live.
In the Highlands, remote communities are cut off from aid by distance and a lack of accessibility.
The aftermath of a catastrophic event often makes an already difficult journey to these isolated areas almost impossible to complete.
Last week, aid started flowing slowly into the villages hit by the landslide.
More significant quantities of food, tents and medical kits arrived on Monday in large trucks, which took days to reach the area.
Thousands gathered around as bags of rice and boxes of tuna were unloaded and distributed to those worst affected by the landslide.
Doug May, who leads the Australian Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) that was sent in to assist, said between 5,000 to 6,000 people may need to be relocated.
"Villages below the slide now have contaminated water coming through and a chance of having the slide come all the way down to them because it's still moving," he said.
Some locals have started using trees and leaves to construct temporary shelters, but it's not enough to meet demand.
While the influx of aid buoyed spirits earlier this week, villagers have questioned why it took so long to get help.
Kurang Ambolo, who led a small group of community volunteers which helped recover the deceased and prepare their bodies to be buried, says locals have made do with what they have at hand.
"The coffin boxes are home-made, they were not given to us," he said.
"We used timber and nails and we built the coffins ourselves."
His team also helped coordinate a survey to determine the people most in need of aid.
It will be a welcome relief to locals left reeling by the disaster.
The changing of seasons will offer further consolation, with less rainfall expected in the months ahead, hopefully lowering the risk of landslips.
But for a community whose lives were shattered in an avalanche of rock and soil, the fear of another deadly disaster will stay with them for some time.
Credits
Reporting: Marian Faa, Theckla Gunga, Lucia Stein and Basel Hindeleh
Photography: Marian Faa
Digital production: Basel Hindeleh
Map graphics: Kylie Silvester and Lindsay Dunbar
Drone footage: Marian Faa, UNDP Papua New Guinea
