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SIERRA LEONE’S PRESIDENT appealed for urgent help for the flood-hit capital of Freetown, where up to 400 people are feared dead, as rescue workers continued a grim search for bodies after one of the worst natural disasters to hit the country.
The Red Cross said it was struggling to excavate families buried deep in the mud that engulfed their homes, though several bodies were pulled up by machines in the devastated hilltop community of Regent, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
Addressing the media in Regent, one of the areas hit hardest by the flooding, President Ernest Bai Koroma fought back tears as he said the devastation “was overwhelming us”.
“Entire communities have been wiped out,” Koroma said at the disaster site, where heavy rains streaming down the hill caused a landslide and engulfed homes three or four storeys high yesterday, many of them built illegally.
“We need urgent support now,” he added.
Goal’s Country Director Anna Fraenzel said that the loss of life caused by flooding and mudslides “already makes this one of the most devastating single-day incident to affect Freetown in its history”.
…That includes any day during the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002, or even the recent Ebola crisis.
The government has promised relief to the more than 3,000 people left homeless, opening an emergency response centre in Regent and four registration centres, while the Red Cross said 600 people were still missing, though the Interior Minister put the number in the thousands.
Israel and Britain said they were sending aid as quickly as possible to the stricken west African city of about one million people.
Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi told AFP on Monday that the death toll was 312, but another Red Cross official, Abu Bakarr Tarrawallie, put the death toll at 245 in an email to AFP on Tuesday, while local media and officials all gave different tolls.
“We are racing against time, more flooding and the risk of disease to help these affected communities survive and cope with their loss,” Tarrawallie said.
‘Sprawling shacks all gone’
At the Regent site, residents told AFP that boulders and rocks had killed many as they rolled onto homes in the early hours of Monday, while a hill partially collapsed as floodwaters streamed down the slopes.
One resident, Abubakar Mansaray, said it took just two minutes for the mudslide to suffocate families in the darkness.
“Many unfinished buildings were at the hilltop, with those sprawling shacks all gone,” he told AFP.
Survivors required immediate shelter, medical and food assistance, and dozens of injured people were receiving treatment, the Red Cross’s Tarawallie said.
Abibatu Kamara, a mother of three who spent the night on her neighbours’ veranda, said the government response so far had been absent.
“We have not received any food or blankets since the disaster occurred yesterday,” she told AFP.
Stagnant water
Three days of torrential rain culminated on Monday in the Regent mudslide and massive flooding elsewhere in the city, one of the world’s wettest urban areas.
Makeshift settlements that clung to the hills and shores were swept away or torn apart.
The city’s drainage system was quickly overwhelmed, leaving stagnant water pooling in some areas while creating dangerous churning waterways down steep streets.
Society 4 Climate Change Communication (S4CCC), a local environment group, called the tragedy a “wake up call”.
“Man-made activity meets climate-change head on, a predictable event now made tragically real,” the group said in a widely shared blog post.
Deforestation, a lack of urban planning and the nation’s existing vulnerability to climate change had all played their part, they said.
Sierra Leone’s meteorological department issued no warning ahead of the torrential rains, which might have allowed for swifter evacuations from the disaster zones.
Foreign donors mobilise
At the city’s military hospital, community health officer Wilberforce Mohammed Rogers said he had treated several children with multiple injuries, including a six-month-old baby. Many had lost their parents, Rogers said.
An AFP journalist met victims sleeping in schools, community centres and out in the open, while others squeezed into the homes of relatives.
Foreign governments, meanwhile, began mobilising aid to Freetown.
Israel’s foreign ministry said it would provide “assistance immediately and in every way possible” including clean water, medicines and blankets.
British International Development Secretary Priti Patel said she was “deeply saddened” by the devastation and was working with the government to establish what next steps to take.
Annual ordeal
Freetown is hit each year by flooding during several months of rain, raising the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera.
Flooding in the capital in 2015 killed 10 people and left thousands homeless.
Sierra Leone was one of the west African nations hit by an outbreak of the Ebola virus in 2014 that left more than 4,000 people dead in the country, and it has struggled to revive its economy since the crisis.
The country ranked 179th out of 188 countries on the UN Development Programme’s 2016 Human Development Index, a basket of data combining life expectancy, education and income and other factors.
- With reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha. © AFP 2017
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I am struggling to remember a single thing this government have managed properly.
Apart from their numerous pay rises.
@Andrew Martin: working day and night to legitimise the pay rise for working day and night to legitimise the pay rise.
@Andrew Martin: errrr how about Ireland ranked 20th highest in full vaccinations? And a working tracking app, how about us not going the way of the UK. We ate doing a lot of right things. Sorry to ruin your massive failed whinge
@Paul Furey: Your opinion is in the minority now unfortunately
… People want the country opened up.
@Paul Furey: ha, a tracking app that chewed through battery power and didnt work 100%, 20th while vaccinating a relatively small population and what way are the UK going? Fully open soon and more vaccinated than us?…… I get that you’re pro govt in the majority of your posts but in reality they’ve handled this crisis very poorly on many levels. Poor communication, leaks, conflicting info, not protecting the elderly in the first wave, afraid to lock down initially while watching everyone else lock down(26th in europe to do so), not engaging with heavily impacted sectors, nearly a year in level 5 and not managing the economy through the whole thing, rules that dont make any sense, taking ages to enforce masks for a airborne disease, not making use of rapid testing. And theres prob more.
@Paul Hedderman: the UK also had 50 deaths today, the highest number since April. Do you want that here too?
@Paul Furey: The only thing this inept government can agree on is on how to F..k things up.
@Sam Harms: Adjust for population. Thats like 3 – 4 deaths here…. And they had 6 yesterday. Thats why 7 day moving averages are better stats to look at to get a more accurate picture.
@Paul Hedderman: in the past 7 days they have had 213 deaths
@Sam Harms: thanks sam. Thats an average of 30. This time in their second wave when they had slightly higher daily cases they were getting around 600 deaths a day. Big difference….. Thankful the vaccienes are being rolled out
@Sam Harms: Thanks also for proving my point. 50 is way worse than the 7 day average of 30. 66.6% more infact.
@Paul Hedderman: so you don’t think an average of 30 people a day dying from covid is bad? How many people are you willing to sacrifice?
@Sam Harms: in the UK, no, thats very good in regard to fighting the virus. Thats like 2 people a day here…… Around 2 people die a day here during flu season. Never any restrictions for that and most people go on with their daily lives unaware. While any death is sad for the loved ones humans get sick and die all the time. We live beside viruses and illness every day of our lives, unrestricted pre covid. We’ll get to a stage with covid where we’ll live unrestricted, hopefully limiting deaths as much as possible, but there’ll probably still be deaths. People need to realise that.
Typical..right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing….
@Paul Somers: typical….moaner
@Paul Furey: is ‘whinge’ your favourite word, Paul?
@JedBartlett: He seems to have an extremely limited vocabulary:)
@Paul Furey: i never tire of seeing you whinge about other people whinging.
Do they ever talk to each other before telling the public stuff?
@Ballybough Marcus: no they haven’t the intelligence
Misunderstanding something they are brilliant at
@Keith O Hanlon: Yes exactly, this is what the email says:You can use your certificate to facilitate travel across EU member states during the Covid-19 pandemic and on the actual cert it mentions that this is not a travel document
@Keith O Hanlon: Yes exactly, this is what the email says:You can use your certificate to facilitate travel across EU member states during the Covid-19 pandemic and on the actual cert it mentions that this is not a travel document
@d: Well thats actually a contradiction in terms as they are saying you must have it, or a pcr / antigen test, to travel.
So if you do not receive the covid passport by email having been vaccinated in June, and are flying on the 19th of July…..and there is no call centre no to contact ? you seriously could not make this up….
@Linda Oreilly: Well wouldn’t that be a little bit silly, booking for the very day the restricitions are up? In Ireland. Where nothing runs on time.
@Tom Tom: And its that sort of attitude that contributes to these shortcomings. “Ah shur we’ll be grand” instead of saying get your overpaid asses into gear get it done properly.
@Linda Oreilly: Is it not going to be available on the Covid tracker app as well? You’d have that to show?
@Fiona Fitzgerald: yep I got my Covid Vaccine Passport via email late last night. No more PCR tests!!
All i can think of anytime one of these eejits make a statement is a chant you would here at a foitball match ” You don’t know what you’re doing”
@Derek Lyster: just waiting and hoping for a slight slip up by theGovernment and the Shinners and lefties are out of the woodwork…the rest of us agree that a good job is being done in extreme and unprecedented situations.
@john gavin: I’m neither a Shinner nor a Leftie as you so condescendingly put it. I would just like our vastly overpaid representatives to do their jobs properly. Not try to rush through legislation that has in no way been thought properly through so they can go on holidays. I for one don’t agree that they, have or are, doing a good job.
@Franny Ando: But that’s exactly what a Stalint-Trotskist-Marxist-Lefty-Commie would say!
Seriously though, it self expires in 3 months and they can’t do it the right way anyway because it’s constitutionally *very* sketchy and likely wouldn’t pass muster. They are lucky they have Michael D to sign it tbh. I doubt some of our previous presidents would.
So, yeah, it’s rubbish, but at least it will put itself in the bin in October so I don’t see the need to stress it.
@John Considine: But remember they are also saying it can be extended beyond Oct. So let’s hope it is put in the bin:)
Michael Martin looking a bit unwell these days
Ahh the good old “GANFYD” approach: “Get A Note From Your Doctor”.
Doctor’s notes waste huge amounts of time and aren’t as valuable as most folk believe. Waste of your own money and your doctor’s time in many cases.
We need to move away from this business of medicalising everything. Why would you need a doctor’s note to eat out, go on holiday etc? Surely that’s the Dept of Health’s decision.
Tried to ring the number today as my cert has the wrong name on it. Rang once then disconnected. This happened 10 times. Looks like they’re getting paid not to answer the phone.
The Mrs. Received her cert today but is disappointed that it can’t be laminated due to the glare from the paper which prevents the digital machine from reading the QR code.
So what’s the phone number then ?
I got mine through my gp but at a hse vaccination centre. God only knows if or how I’ll get one. I better call the helpline. Oh no wait, its not set up yet.
Got phizer in a country outside the EU. I wonder will they accept my covid vaccination certificate!
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