Uganda landslide kills over 90
At least 91 people are dead and hundreds are missing after a landslide swept through a mountainous region in eastern Uganda on March 2, 2010. The landslide happened in the Budada region, about 275 kilometres east of the capital Kampala.
The landslides moved through three villages overnight, swamping houses, stores and at least one school. Rescue workers and police travelled to the site Tuesday to assess the damage and help survivors.
Officials have recovered 91 bodies, but the death toll could rise. About 300 are feared to be dead and hundreds others homeless. The government has made an appeal to survivors to vacate the landslide-risk areas. Mr Micheal Nataka, the acting secretary general of URC, said the challenge has been on how survivors can be assisted in various ways. He said the money that NMG donated would help in ensuring that victims get food, clothes and shelter.
While addressing the press, Mr Joseph Odindo, the editorial director, Nations Media Group (NMG), said; “This is to show our support to the Bududa victims. We are deeply involved and demonstrating our solidarity with the government in helping out.”
Light of Hope co-founder Dan Katongole is devastated at what happened in his home country. We really need donations so Light of Hope can make a difference.
This woman mourns the loss of her husband and child after the landslide.
The Minister of Information and National Guidance, Ms Kabakumba Masiko, on March 3 in response to the landslide disaster in Bududa District said: "I would first want to sympathise and send my condolences to those who have lost their dear ones and property. We did not expect this disaster, but it was bound to happen. Last year, we issued warnings to people living in areas that are vulnerable to mudslides and floods to shift to safer places. However, President Museveni has been in Bududa for on-the-spot check and he has guided that another place be found to settle the survivors. Survivors should also be temporary taken care of by the government and a team is already in place doing some work. Development partners have also joined and other private companies have pledged some support."
The survivors need food and shelter, clean water and health facilities.
Although majority of the survivors from Nametsi village and the surrounding ridges prone to landslides have relocated to a temporary camp at Bulucheke Sub-county headquarters, Ms Agatha Nabulo is yet to make the move. Ms Nabulo, who lost her entire family of 16 in the March 1 disaster, is refusing to leave Nametsi until all the bodies of her relatives are retrieved and given a decent burial.
She is not alone; there are about 20 other survivors who have stayed at the ruins where between 250 and 350 people are believed to be still buried underneath. Every morning they look up to the skies, let their eyes dart around the vast waste hoping for some miracle to dig up their loved ones buried under tons of rock and soil.
Promised help of large earth moving equipment and a presidential directive that everyone buried under must be retrieved and accounted for are yet to materialise. “I only go to Bulucheke to get food and I come back here, look through this place every day hoping to find my dead relatives,” Ms Nabulo said last week.
“I know they are dead now but it is important in our tradition to get the remains whether bones or even ash and give a decent burial in order not to be attacked by spirits.”
Ms Nalubo says she understands the difficulties in retrieving the bodies and more so identifying people buried now for more than 30 days, but she is still holding on to the hope of a miracle. Many others are waiting too, especially after reports that the United Nations Mission in Congo (Monuc) is to help airlift earth movers to the site. “We were told the UN was coming with big helicopters (carrying bulldozers) to start exhuming the bodies but we are still waiting,” says Mr Michael Natseli who also lost his wife and three children.
Although the ground leveling to pave way for a landing pad is complete, a helicopter from the UN last month only came, hovered around the ridges and went back without any sign that they would come back with the promised equipment.
The national director for emergence coordination and operation in the Office of the Prime Minister, Maj. Gen. Julius Oketta, however, says there is a lot of technological aspects supposed to be considered before airlifting of equipment to the site. He revealed that the hovering of the helicopter at the ridges was meant to make final surveillance, take the coordinates and determine the weather changes in the area before landing can be effected “We expect them (Monuc) anytime from now because the UN and the government have now taken over exhuming of the bodies,” Gen. Oketta said.
He said once the bodies are exhumed, chance will be given to the locals to identify relatives and the remaining shall be buried in a mass grave. A national day of mourning would be declared and a monument in memory of those killed is to be built.
Activity at the scene of devastation has since gone silent but the shock is still clear. Instead, the place has turned into a sort of pilgrimage where relatives and other survivors return every morning, huddle in groups and still talk in low tones.
Except for remnants of iron sheets; wattle, stones, brick, a few remains of the clothes in the gardens and other debris scattered, everything has been buried; the surroundings looks abandoned.
Bududa District chairman Wilson Watira is siding with the survivors, maintaining hope that every individual will be accorded a descent burial. “My people are still buried under the rubble. The only thing I need is to have them exhumed to be given a decent burial,” he told Daily Monitor over the weekend.
“This is what everyone is craving for and if Monuc does not come, we shall continue with our local efforts to have the bodies exhumed.” But for locals like Ms Nabulo, time is a slow healer and only a decent burial for lost relatives will exorcise the ghosts of the tragedy.
Thanks to Mawadri Philip for the update and pictures.
