At least 31 people were killed when a mound of rubbish at a major waste site collapsed onto nearby homes in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, on Sunday 23 August, the government said in a statement quoted by the BBC.
The government said another 22 people were injured, six of them seriously, in the city’s Dar-es-Salam area. According to the BBC, the collapse happened at about 02:00 local time after heavy rain overnight, and the authorities deployed what the government called “significant” resources and personnel, including the military, to search for survivors.
The Search and the Response
The BBC reported that rescuers used excavators to comb through the scattered waste while residents gathered nearby. An eyewitness, Robert Kamano Sâa, told the Associated Press that a second section of the site gave way in three successive stages as people climbed on the rubbish to help those buried by the first. Neighbourhood leader Lancine Sylla told AFP he feared a heavy death toll and said 18 bodies had been taken to the morgue at that point.
Prime Minister Mamadou Oury Bah visited the scene to oversee the search, the BBC said, and Health Minister Khaïté Sall told the injured in hospital that they would receive free medical care and that families would be supported by the government.
Earlier Warnings
The BBC noted that ten people were killed at the same site in 2017. It said the government had recently ordered people living close to the landfill to move, but many residents chose to stay. Cellou Dalein Diallo, an opposition figure and former prime minister who lives in exile, described the collapse as a tragedy and said the landfill’s closure had been announced for that same Sunday, 23 August, according to the BBC.
Why It Matters
The collapse followed heavy overnight rain, the government said, and fell on homes beside a site whose closure, according to opposition figure Cellou Dalein Diallo, had been announced for that same day. The BBC reported that the government had recently ordered people living near the landfill to move and that many stayed, which raises practical questions about relocation, enforcement and alternatives for residents who stay because they have nowhere else to go. The casualty figures above are the government’s initial toll as reported by the BBC and are provisional: on Tuesday 25 August, AFP reported, Health Minister Khaïté Sall put the toll at 34 dead and 33 injured, six of them seriously.
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