The death toll from a landslide at a vast rubbish dump in Uganda’s capital Kampala has risen to 18, police said on Sunday, amid claims the site was a disaster waiting to happen.
Local media said homes, people and livestock were swallowed by mountains of rubbish at the landfill in Kiteezi district, north of Kampala, on Saturday after a collapse caused by heavy rain.
President Yoweri Museveni said he had ordered army special forces to help with the search and rescue operation and demanded to know who allowed people to live near a “potentially dangerous and dangerous heap”.
Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Patrick Onyango told reporters at the scene that 14 bodies were recovered on Saturday and another four on Sunday.
He did not give details, but on Saturday the Kampala Capital City Authority, which operates the landfill, gave a death toll of eight, including two children.
Earlier, Onyango told AFP that around 1,000 people were displaced and that police were working with other government agencies and community leaders to see how to help those affected.
Kampala mayor Erias Lukwago told AFP that “many, many more could still be buried in the pile while the rescue operation is underway.”
He described it as a “national disaster”, accusing corrupt officials who have embezzled money that should have been used to maintain the landfill.
– ‘Danger zone’ –
Museveni said in a statement published on
He also called for an investigation into how people were allowed to live so close to the site and ordered the removal of all those living in the “danger zone”.
Excavators were still sifting through huge mounds of rubbish on Sunday as crowds of local residents looked on, some crying in despair.
Lukwago on Saturday raised concerns about the safety of the 36-acre (14-hectare) Kiteezi landfill, which was established in 1996 and receives almost all of the waste collected in Kampala.
“This is a disaster and it was bound to happen because the landfill was full,” he told AFP, adding that he received around 1,500 tonnes of waste per day.
In January, Lukwago had warned that people working and living near the site were at risk of numerous health hazards due to waste overflow.
Several areas in Uganda and other parts of East Africa have recently been hit by heavy rain, including Ethiopia, the continent’s second most populous country.
Devastating landslides in a remote mountainous area in southern Ethiopia last month killed around 250 people.
In February 2010, landslides in the Mount Elgon region of eastern Uganda killed more than 350 people.
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