By Umaru Fofana
The National Disaster Management Agency has confirmed the deaths of eight people in Freetown following the heavy downpours of rain over the weekend.
In two separate incidents, two died after walls fell on their houses, while six crushed after a landslide in the mountainous Looking Town area at Kissy.
Akeola Taylor, an eyewitness who is a local pastor in the area, said he was standing outside his house around 8 o clock in the morning when he saw trees and mud crashing down. He said they immediately mobilized the community and grabbed whatever tool they could lay hands on and dashed to the rescue. He said they took pickaxes and shovels and managed to rescue some people but that sadly in one apartment five people died and in another, one succumbed.
He appealed to the authorities to help remove three boulders hanging over the area before they would wreak further havoc especially on houses downhill.
A survivor in one of the destroyed houses, Zainab Gbla, said she had woken up to ease herself and returned to sleep but could not. She went to the living room before the mud came crashing. “It covered everything on the back side of our house. It even trapped my husband who was inside the room”.
She said that with help from neighbours, her husband was rescued. She lamented that they could not bring out any of their belongings.
Just close to the destroyed houses stood a damaged one which had been hit by the nose of a boulder last year. The local chief in the area said when that happened they asked everyone to leave the area but that some did not because they had nowhere to go.
“The people in the community did not have anywhere to go and do not have now, so they are looking up to the government to relocate them” Chief Unisa Turay said.
There are families directly in the way of the boulders who have stayed put despite the warnings.
The head of the disaster agency, Lt Gen (Rtd) Brima Bureh Sesay has warned repeatedly that people living in low-lying areas must leave and go to higher ground.
He said the lands ministry and the Freetown City Council needed to come together to find a way out of people building in disaster-prone areas in and around Freetown.
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