Hundreds die in African flood fury

– At least 312 people were killed and more than 2 000 left homeless on Monday when heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown, leaving excavators to pull bodies from rubble and overwhelming the city’s morgues.

An AFP journalist saw several homes submerged in Regent village, a hilltop community, and corpses floating in the water in the Lumley West area of the city as the president assured emergency services were doing all they could to tackle one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit the city.

Red Cross spokesperson Patrick Massaquoi said the death toll was 312 but could rise as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown.

“I counted over 300 bodies and more are coming,” Mohamed Sinneh, a morgue technician at Freetown’s Connaught Hospital, said, having earlier described an “overwhelming number of dead” at the facility leaving no space to lay out every body. Many more of the dead were taken to private morgues, Sinneh said.

President Ernest Bai Koroma said in an address to the nation an emergency response centre had been established at Regent, the worst-affected area. He appealed for unity from a nation still struggling with the legacy of ebola and a long civil war.

“Our nation has once again been gripped by grief. Many of our compatriots have lost their lives, many more have been gravely injured and billions of Leones’ worth of property destroyed in the flooding and landslides that swept across some parts of our city,” he said.

“Every single family, every single ethnic group, every single region is either directly or indirectly affected by this disaster.”

Koroma announced that centres would be set up across the city to register those made homeless.

Images obtained by AFP showed ferocious, churning dark-orange mud coursing down a steep street in the capital, while videos posted by local residents showed people waist- or chest-deep in water trying to cross the road.

The Sierra Leone meteorological department did not issue any warning ahead of the torrential rains to hasten evacuation from the disaster zones.

Deputy Information Minister Cornelius Deveaux earlier confirmed Koroma had called a national emergency and said his own boss, Information Minister Mohamed Bangura, was in hospital after being injured in the flooding.

Meanwhile, disaster management official Vandy Rogers said “more than 2 000 people are homeless”. – AFP