At least 200 still missing in Sierra Leone mudslide: official

FREETOWN, Aug. 16 — Chief coordinator of the Emergency
Response Center set up by the government of Sierra Leone in Freetown, the
capital city, revealed to the media Tuesday that over 500 people have been
registered as missing since a devastating mudslide struck an area on the
outskirts of Freetown early Monday.

However, out of these registered people, nearly 300 of them have been
discovered dead, and sent to the Connaught Hospital Mortuary, according to
coordinator Evon Aki-Sawyer. This means at least 200 people are still
missing from the mudslide and flooding disaster that occurred on Monday
morning in the West African country following heavy rains. To collect data
on residents in the disaster affected areas of Sugar Loaf, Kaningo in the
Lumley community and other parts of the city, the government set up the
emergency response center at Regent town in the Western Rural, where
relatives could register their loved ones feared to be missing in the
disaster. As registration work is still ongoing at the center, the number
of people missing is feared to rise further.At the centre, wailing family
members are clustered to get the names of their relatives registered in the
government data.

In total, four excavators are deployed at the disaster site, but only
three are in operation while rescue officers including the Sierra Leone Red
Cross, the military, the police and other youth volunteers are helping to
remove more bodies from the debris. Although the Commander of the Joint
Forces of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces, General B. Sesay could not grant
an interview at the site, observations are that the rescue team is not well
equipped to carry out the rescue operation. According to one of the
excavator operators, Mohamed Sillah, an employee of the Gento Group of
Companies, it would be difficult to get everybody out from the debris
“because the boulders are so heavy that the machines cannot easily lift
them”. He estimated that the operation could last for a week but expressed
fear that buried bodies could have been decomposed by then.

SURVIVOR GIVES ACCOUNT OF MUDSLIDE

“I was assisting one of my neighbours whose house was flooded while it
was raining. I narrowly escaped when I experienced an earth quake-like
trembling. I quickly ran away when I saw something like a smoke from the
mountain,” said Samuel Fofanah, one of the survivors in the disaster. He
continued that he lost his entire family. He sustained minor injury on one
of his legs and he is currently at the response centre at Regent where he
is being provided with medical and psychosocial treatment.

At the centre, food, medicine, clothing and other facilities are being
provided by the government, individuals and humanitarian organizations for
traumatized relatives.Also, the Environmental and Santitation Officer of
the Freetown City Council, Sulaiman Zainu Parker, said the government would
start burying corpses although he could not indicate the actual date. – XINHUA