At least 23 people perished in a landslide triggered by torrential rains on Sunday October 8 evening in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, according to a provisional report from a fire department official who is continuing the search.
Landslides during the rainy season are a frequent occurrence in Yaoundé, a city dotted with hills on whose slopes precarious dwellings are sometimes built.
This time, the tragedy occurred early Sunday evening in the Mbankolo district on Yaoundé’s north-western outskirts, and was caused by the breach of a dike holding back the waters of an artificial lake located high up, according to public television station CRTV.
“Yesterday we extracted 15 dead people and this morning we extracted eight. We’re still searching,” David Petatoa Poufong, second-in-command of the national fire department, told journalists at the scene on Monday morning.
At mid-morning, the bodies of the eight victims found on Monday were loaded into a fire department pick-up, covered in sheets, in front of a packed crowd of onlookers and mourners.
“There was a landslide following heavy rain. The water swept away everything in its path”, Daouda Ousmanou, sub-prefect of Yaoundé’s Sector II, where Mbankolo is located, told public radio.
According to CRTV, the torrential rains caused a “dike breach” in the neighborhood, which “triggered a mudslide” and “some 30 houses were destroyed”. The channel also broadcast images, obviously taken at night, showing torrents of water and mud continuing to flow in places, as well as at least three lifeless bodies covered in loincloths or sheets.
On November 27, 2022, at least 15 people died when a hillside collapsed in the Damas district, south of Mbankolo. In this working-class district, torrential rains had caused a hillside wasteland to collapse, where a crowd was attending a funeral tribute.