The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
– ‘Lost everything’ –
Fatmata Sesay, who lives on the hilltop area of Juba, said she, her three children and husband were awoken at 4:30 am by rain pounding on the mud house they occupy, which was by then submerged by water.
“I only managed to escape by climbing to the roof of the house when neighbours came in to rescue me,” she said.
“We have lost everything and we do not have a place to sleep,” she told AFP in tears.
Deputy Information Minister Cornelius Deveaux confirmed President Ernest Bai Koroma had called a national emergency, and said his own boss, Information Minister Mohamed Bangura, was in hospital after being injured in the flooding.
Deveaux said “hundreds” of people had lost their lives and had properties damaged, and promised food and other assistance for the victims.
He called on the public to remain calm with rescue efforts underway.
– Piles of corpses –
The scale of the human cost of the floods was only becoming clear on Monday afternoon, as images of battered corpses piled on top of each other circulated and residents spoke of their struggles to cope with the destruction and find their loved ones.
Meanwhile disaster management official Vandy Rogers said that “over 2,000 people are 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 of 1.2 million, is hit each year by flooding during several months of rain that destroys makeshift settlements and raises the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera.
Sasha Ekanayake, Save the Children’s Sierra Leone Country Director, said the immediate priority was to provide shelter and protect residents, especially children, from the spread of deadly waterborne diseases.
“We are still in the rainy season and must be prepared to respond in the event of further emergencies to come,” she said in a statement.
Deepest sympathy with #SierraLeone families & communities that have lost loved ones. @oxfam on ground w/ other humanitarians helping. https://t.co/q8fAATYzLB
— Winnie Byanyima (@Winnie_Byanyima) August 14, 2017
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 in the country, and it has struggled to revive its economy since the crisis.
About 60 percent of people in Sierra Leone live below the national poverty line, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The country ranked 179th out of 188 countries on the UNDP’s 2016 Human Development Index, a basket of data combining life expectancy, education and income and other factors.
