72 die in Ethiopia garbage landslide
BEREAVED families scuffled with rescue workers on yesterday at a dump in the Ethiopian capital where the collapse of a mountain of garbage killed at least 72 people on Saturday.
Relatives pushed and shoved emergency workers, angrily accusing them of delays and saying dozens of people were still missing after the disaster at the Reppi dump.
“Nobody is helping us. We are doing all the digging ourselves. It is shameful,” Kaleab Tsegaye, a relative of one victim, told the Reuters news agency.
Ethiopia yesterday declared three days of national mourning that will be observed from tomorrow.
The collapse late on Saturday destroyed 49 makeshift homes inside the landfill site on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, city spokesman Amare Mekonen said.
Over the past few days, a few rescuers have used bulldozers to move piles of rubbish as hundreds of people have gathered at the scene, weeping and praying. Some dug through the garbage with their hands.
“My babies, my babies, my little daughter,” cried one man wandering through the dump in the Ethiopian capital on Monday, tears streaming down his face. Neighbours said he had lost his wife and four children.
On one side of the hill, volunteers sobbed as they pulled out three corpses, including a child found on top of its mother. Hundreds of people live on the 50-year-old Reppi dump, the capital’s only landfill site, scavenging for food and items they can sell such as recyclable metal. It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse. “We expect the number of victims to increase because the landslide covered a relatively large area,” Dagmawit Moges, head of the city’s communications bureau, said.
About 150 people were at the site when the landslide happened, resident Assefa Teklemahimanot told The Associated Press news agency.
Addis Ababa Mayor Diriba Kuma said 37 people had been rescued and were receiving medical treatment.
“In the long run, we will conduct a resettling programme to relocate people who live in and around the landfill,” he said.
“My house was right inside there,” said a shaken Tebeju Asres, pointing to where one of the excavators was digging in deep, black mud. “My mother and three of my sisters were there when the landslide happened. Now, I don’t know the fate of all of them.”
The resumption of dumping at the site in recent months likely caused the landslide, Assefa said.
Dumping had stopped in recent years, but it resumed after farmers in a nearby region, where a new landfill complex was being built, blocked dumping in their area.— Al Jazeera.