The Albany Gazette - Despair and anger erupt after deadly Guinea landfill collapse

Abou Hamza, an outraged resident of Conakry's Dar es Salam neighbourhood where the collapse killed 31 people in the early hours of Sunday, said that locals had tried to alert Guinea's authorities to the danger.

The garbage dump collapse in the capital suburb followed heavy rain, injuring more than 20 people and destroying several homes.

Deaths, screaming, the wailing of those realising their loved ones had died: the residents of Dar es Salam were jolted into a sudden nightmare.

Abdoul Soumah, a young man, said his mother, his brothers and his sister were all killed.

Alhassane Camara, another young neighbourhood resident, recounted the moment the landslide struck his home in the middle of the night, instantly killing his younger brother.

"I was sleeping with my two brothers... there were strange noises behind me. Then I saw things fall", he said.

Of his brothers "there were two little ones: one died inside and we managed to get the other one out," he said.

His mother, grandmother and sisters all escaped as well. "It was God who helped us," Camara said.

By Monday the landslide site was cordoned off by security, and the grounds even muddier due to the pounding rain.

Dozens of people including children had desperately crowded at the top of the heaps alongside excavators on Sunday searching for survivors and the dead, while rescue teams travelled back and forth, carrying people on stretchers, escorted by distraught relatives.

Dozens of grieving women could be seen crying in anguish, comforting each other.

- 'Everyone was screaming' -

"We young people did everything to prevent this. We organised meetings and invited officials, but they didn't take the matter seriously", Hamza, who serves as a youth community leader, told AFP at the scene.

"The state failed to take steps to close the dump", he said. "Yet they had promised us they would a year ago."

Resident Aboubacar Camara appeared exhausted Sunday but said he had managed to save his family.

"Around two or three o'clock in the morning we heard a slide, screams outside, everyone was screaming", he said.

Just as he stepped out of his home with his wife, a second slide occurred, sweeping away several young men from the neighbourhood who had gone to rescue victims of the first landslide, he said.

"Everyone who went there to help, they all ended up buried in it", he said.

Resident Player Macire's husband had gone to save people after the first collapse "and then, suddenly, a second disaster buried the father of my children", she said.

Cire Kallo told AFP: "My life stopped today. I no longer need life." She said her five children as well as her husband had died.

The mayor of the Gbessia commune, where Dar es Salam is located, said Monday that one of her daughters and her youngest child, a boy, were alive at a nearby hospital.

- 'Tragedy' -

Some 358 people affected by the landslide were sheltering at a school in the city's Dixinn Centre neighbourhood, Lancei Toure, director general of the National Agency for Humanitarian Emergency and Disaster Management (ANGUCH), said on Monday.

Some 72 households were assessed as still directly at risk of harm, and those living in dangerous areas were told to evacuate, he said.

Housing, food, clothing and healthcare are being provided, the agency said, with a mobile clinic to be set up and mobilisation of a psychological and social support team.

Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the scene Sunday. He said measures were being taken "to ensure medical care for the injured" and "assistance for those affected by this tragedy".

In recent days, the government had announced operations to evacuate residents and secure the area surrounding the landfill due to the risk of landslides.

The rainy season is particularly long and intense in the region.

Cellou Dalein Diallo, a leading Guinean opposition figure and former prime minister currently living in exile, described the event as "a tragedy that plunges us into dismay".

In a Facebook post, exiled former Guinean president Alpha Conde wrote that "the dignity and safety of (our) most vulnerable populations" must be protected.

"Guinea is in mourning today," he said.

(B.Ramirez--TAG)