312 dead in mudslide devastation

Mortuaries struggle to cope after Sierra Leone’s capital hit by massive flooding

HEAVY flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown yesterday, leaving mortuaries overflowing, thousands homeless and residents desperately searching for loved ones. The death toll from the disaster stands at 312, with many of the victims being children.

Houses were submerged in two areas of the city, where roads turned into churning rivers of mud and corpses washed up on the streets.

Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi said the death toll was 312 but could rise as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown and tally the number of dead.

Mohamed Sinneh, a mortuary technician at Freetown’s Connaught Hospital, said 180 bodies had been received so far at his facility alone, many of them children, leaving no space for what he described as the overwhelming number of dead.

Many more bodies were taken to private mortuaries, Sinneh said.

Images showed a ferocious churning of dark orange mud coursing down a steep street in the capital, while videos posted by residents showed people waist and chest deep in water trying to traverse the road.

Fatmata Sesay, who lives on the hilltop area of Juba, said she, her three children and husband were awoken at 4.30am by rain beating down on the mud house they occupy, which was by then submerged by water.

She managed to escape by climbing onto the roof.

“We have lost everything and we do not have a place to sleep,” she said.

Media reports said a section of a hill in the Regent area of the city had partially collapsed, exacerbating the disaster.

Other images showed battered corpses piled on top of each other, as residents struggled to cope with the destruction.

Meanwhile, disaster management official Candy Rogers said that more than 2 000 people were homeless, hinting at the huge humanitarian effort that will be required to deal with the fallout of the flooding in one of Africa’s poorest nations.

Freetown, an overcrowded coastal city with a population of 1.2 million, is hit by flooding each year during several months of rain that destroys makeshift settlements and raises the risk of waterborne diseases like 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 and it has struggled to revive its economy since the crisis.

About 60% of people in Sierra Leone live below the national poverty line, according to the United Nations Development Programme.