Locals frantically looked for survivors on Tuesday using shovels or their bare hands after the deadliest known landslide in Ethiopia’s Horn of Africa region killed at least 229 people. The landslide occurred in a rural area in southern Ethiopia.
Images shared on social media by the local authorities showed crowds gathered at the disaster scene in a remote and mountainous section of South Ethiopia regional state, with some individuals digging over heaps of red mud.
Following the calamity that rocked the Kencho-Shacha community in the Gofa Zone on Monday, the local Communications Affairs Department released a statement confirming the deaths of 148 men and 81 women thus far.
According to an earlier report from the government-owned Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation, five persons had been recovered alive from the muck and were receiving medical attention at facilities.
According to Firaol Bekele, early warning director of the Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission (EDRMC), “four households were initially affected by the landslide, and later households in the area were mobilized to save lives.” This was reported to AFP.
He continued, saying that the tragedy was brought on by the strong rains that had lashed the region on Sunday night. “But they too perished when the landslide engulfed them.”
According to Dagemawi Ayele, the local administrator, teachers, medical personnel, and agricultural experts who had hurried to assist were among the casualties, as reported by EBC.
The Gofa administration shared pictures on social media of locals transporting dead people’s remains on improvised stretchers, some of which were covered in plastic sheeting.
With almost 120 million citizens, Ethiopia is the second most populated country in Africa and is particularly susceptible to weather-related disasters like drought and flooding.
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, expressed his great sadness for the death on X.
“The Federal Disaster Prevention Task Force was sent to the area after the accident and is currently working to lessen the disaster’s impact.”
“As rescue efforts continue to locate the missing and aid the displaced, we stand in strong solidarity with the people and Government of Ethiopia,” he declared on X.
Gofa, a regional state in South Ethiopia, is around 450 kilometers (270 miles) away from Addis Ababa, the country’s capital, yet it takes about ten hours to drive there.
“It’s a rural, remote, and extremely mountainous area,” stated an Ethiopian refugee from a nearby district who is currently residing in Kenya.
“That area’s soil isn’t strong, so the soil immediately runs down to the ground below when heavy rains and landslides happen,” he said to AFP in Nairobi.
Disasters of this kind have occurred previously. More than 20 people perished in a similar tragedy that occurred last year, and prior to that, landslides and intense rains in the region claimed lives virtually every rainy season.
According to the UN’s humanitarian response organization OCHA, the state of South Ethiopia had already been severely damaged by the seasonal rains in April and early May, resulting in flooding and widespread displacement.
It stated in May that floods had a negative impact on over 19,000 individuals across multiple zones, uprooting over 1,000 people and damaging infrastructure and means of subsistence.
In Wolaita, South Ethiopia, landslides caused by intense rainfall in 2016 claimed 41 lives.
When a pile of trash at a dump outside of Addis Ababa collapsed in 2017, at least 113 individuals lost their lives.
In August 2017, 1,141 people died in the deadliest landslide in African history, which occurred in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.
More than 350 people lost their lives in February 2010 due to mudslides in the eastern Ugandan district of Mount Elgon.
