MUDSLIDE HORROR
300 dead as torrent washes away homes on mountainside
UNSTOPPABLE and deadly, a mudslide sweeps through a West African town, killing at least 300.
Disaster struck on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown on Monday, with homes washed away in the raging torrent.
At least 205 bodies have been taken to the central morgue, said the Red Cross, but the death toll was expected to rise as more were recovered. An estimated 2,000 have been left homeless.
Police and military personnel were at the scene in the mountain town of Regent yesterday, searching for those who were still trapped in the debris.
They were joined by relatives scraping through the mud in a desperate attempt to find the bodies of loved ones.
Many residents living at the foot of Mount Sugar Loaf had been asleep when the mountainside collapsed, burying dozens of houses, including two- storey buildings, witnesses said.
One mother wept as she described how she had tried but failed to rescue her seven-week-old daughter.
Adama Kamara said: ‘We were inside
‘My baby was covered alive’
when we heard the mudslide approaching. I attempted to grab my baby but the mud was too fast. She was covered alive.’
Mrs Kamara, who suffered bruising, said she was not sure what had happened to her husband.
Salimatu Bangura, 36, escaped but her brother died. She said: ‘We were asleep when we heard the noise of one of the walls falling down. By the time we got up water was flowing in and the whole house was flooded.’
Yesterday an excavator was at work on the mountainside and ambulances were rushing back and forth to the city centre with bodies and the wounded, but rescue efforts were hampered by bad roads and the weather.
Community chief Fatmata Tarawallie said help did not arrive soon enough. ‘Now our community has sunk,’ she said.
The country’s vice-president Victor Foh said: ‘The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken. We’re trying to cordon the area, evacuate the people.
‘It is likely that hundreds are lying dead underneath the rubble.’ He claimed that a number of illegal buildings had been erected in the area.
Mudslides and floods are common during the rainy season in West Africa, where deforestation and poor town planning has put residents at risk.
Sierra Leone suffered a brutal civil war which ended in 2002 with the help of Britain, the former colonial power, and a large United Nations peacekeeping mission. The country has experienced substantial economic growth in recent years, although the ruinous effects of the civil war continue to be felt.
In January Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon announced a training programme for British forces in Sierra Leone to help ‘ensure stability in the region’.
Ninety soldiers from 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards B Squadron carried out training exercises with 25 local troops.