Thirty people were killed in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, when a mound of rubbish at a landfill collapsed onto neighbouring homes before dawn on Sunday following heavy rains, the government said (Geo News).
Six others were seriously injured.
What happened
The collapse occurred at 2:00am local time (0200 GMT) in the Dar-es-Salam neighbourhood of the Bbessia district, on the capital’s outskirts.
“Significant material and human resources have been deployed to search for any people who may still be buried, to rescue the victims and to recover the bodies,” the government said in a statement.
Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the site, where excavators were working through the collapsed landfill as a crowd looked on.
The government said measures had been taken to ensure medical care for the wounded and assistance for those affected.
The toll may not be final
The figure of 30 is the official count. Before it was announced, a neighbourhood leader had given his own account of the casualties, and rescuers were still searching for people who may remain buried.
Tolls in incidents of this kind commonly rise as excavation continues.
Why homes were there
The proximity is the substance of the story rather than an incidental detail.
Housing built against the edge of an active municipal landfill is a feature of rapidly urbanising cities where formal housing has not kept pace with population growth, and where waste sites are among the few places people can settle without paying for land.
Heavy rain saturates and destabilises accumulated refuse. The collapse of a waste mound onto adjacent housing is, in that sense, a predictable failure rather than an unforeseeable one — comparable incidents have killed large numbers in Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and Mozambique in recent years.
No cause beyond the rainfall has been established, and no review of the site’s management has been announced.
