By Country Director | Sierra Leone
Ceaseless heavy rainfall on 13th and 14th August left areas of Freetown devastated by a mudslide, and burying some communities in more than 50 feet of mud and boulders.
The cities insufficient drainage system, poor waste management and overcrowded urban dwellings further amplified the devastation. More than 500 people lost their lives in this natural disaster, and over 900 men women and children registered missing.
Overwhelmingly, this disaster affected the most impoverished families in Freetown, an already vulnerable population who were the hardest hit during the Ebola outbreak and have experienced recurrent flooding over many years. The overcrowded areas and poor structural integrity of the buildings left little hope of resilience in the face of the power of the flood waters.
In the immediate aftermath of the floods water, sanitation, food, healthcare, shelter and psychological support were the essential areas of focus.
IsraAID began to respond to the crisis just one day after the event and developed an intervention targeting 2 of the worst affected communities Kamayama (757 registered) and Kaningo (1058 registered) which represented 34% of the total affected population. The 2 communities experienced a very different event on the day of the disaster with Kamayama close to the mud slide experiencing many deaths as well as loss of property and possessions, and Kaningo, where no local deaths were registered but most of the bodies ended after being swept down the river from the communities at higher elevations.
In the 3 weeks following the disaster IsraAID's team rapidly assessed the situation and subsequently designed a response focused primarily on mental health and psycho-social support with health and hygiene promotion messages, construction of sanitation tools and distribution of basic hygiene supplies. IsraAID was able to provide support for groups and individuals with the aim of assisting affected communities to process their grief and experiences and move forward into the recovery phase.
Thank you for supporting IsraAID's work in Sierra Leone!
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
