The death toll from a garbage landslide at a vast landfill in the Ugandan capital Kampala has risen to 12, police said on Sunday. Local media reported that homes, people, and livestock were engulfed in mountains of rubbish at the dump in Kiteezi on Saturday after a collapse caused by heavy rainfall.
Kampala mayor Erias Lukwago had previously described the site as a disaster waiting to happen, raising concerns earlier this year about the health risks posed by the overflowing waste. “We have so far retrieved 12 dead bodies from the garbage heap and rescued 14 people alive,” Kampala’s metropolitan police spokesman Patrick Onyango told AFP. “The rescue operation is still ongoing until we are sure no one is trapped under (the garbage),” he said, adding that several animals had been rescued alive, including a dog.
Kampala Capital City Authority, which operates the landfill, had initially reported a death toll of eight, including two children. “In our estimation, about 1,000 people have been displaced by the incident and (we are) currently working with other agencies of government and the community leadership to see how to help the affected people,” Onyango said.
Images from the scene showed a Ugandan police excavator churning through huge mounds of rubbish on Saturday as large crowds of local residents looked on. Some gathered behind yellow police tape carrying pictures of their missing loved ones.
Lukwago told AFP on Saturday that the Kiteezi landfill, a 36-acre (14 hectare) site in a northern district of the capital, was full to capacity. “This is a disaster and was bound to happen,” he added.
In January, Lukwago had warned that people working and living near the Kiteezi landfill were at risk of numerous health hazards due to overflowing waste. He described the situation as a “national crisis” that needed the central government and parliament to intervene.
The 36-acre landfill, established in 1996, serves as the dump for almost all garbage collected across Kampala. Lukwago said it received about 1,500 tonnes of waste a day.
Several areas in Uganda and other parts of East Africa have been battered by heavy rains recently, including Ethiopia, the second most populous country on the continent. Devastating mudslides in a remote mountainous area in southern Ethiopia last month killed around 250 people.
In February 2010, mudslides in the Mount Elgon region of eastern Uganda killed more than 350 people.
