‘This Is Too Much for Us’: Sierra Leone Deluged by Mud and Grief
15, 2017
AUG. 15, 2017
DAKAR, Senegal — The bodies floated down the streets and piled up at the morgue, where the coroners struggled to find room for all of the dead.
An already devastating flood the day before produced even more anguish on Tuesday in Sierra Leone
as residents of Freetown, the capital, dug through the mud in search of missing family members.
AUG. 15, 2017
," the president said, advising people to remain calm and avoid areas still vulnerable to slides.
that Let me assure you that my government is fully engaged on this situation
The Red Cross said hundreds of people had been killed
and 600 were missing after torrential rains early Monday caused mudslides and transformed city streets into fast-moving rivers of muddy water, washing away everything in their path.
On Tuesday, Save the Children, an aid organization, said that one of its staff members and his young children were among the hundreds missing.
President Ernest Bai Koroma said in a televised address to the nation
that he was "very disturbed by this national tragedy," and promised to create an emergency response center in Regent, a neighborhood where dozens of people were thought to be trapped inside homes buried under soaked earth cleaved from the hillside.
