Sierra Leone: Mudslide 2017

In the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) formal commitments to Accountability to Affected Populations (CAAPs) it was acknowledged that “communication with, and inclusion of, crisis-affected populations in the design and provision of humanitarian

Sierra Leone is vulnerable to floods and mudslides but still lacks an adequate disaster management plan, largely due to the negligence of policymakers.

After a landslide in Sierra Leone in 2017, rapid urbanisation and deforestation were identified as the main causes of the disaster. The challenge now is to find ways to build affordable homes, while ensuring that the infrastructure is resilient to extreme weather events.

In Freetown, coordinated services in three areas – land administration, disaster risk management, and geospatial information production and sharing – may hold the key to helping the city prevent another mudslide or disaster. The World Bank and University of Melbourne are researching how geospatial and national land information can build Sierra Leone's resilience.

Freetown is still under threat one year after a devastating mudslide killed an estimated 1,000 people and left thousands homeless. It must tackle deforestation, poor housing and decrepit drainage if it is to prevent the next disaster, but insufficient funding remains a major obstacle to upgrading the city's infrastructure.

To celebrate World Environment Day, hundreds of Freetonians came together to plant a tree in honor of the more than 1000 people killed and missing after landslides and floods hit Freetown in 2017. The tree-planting also marks an important phase of the Freetown Emergency Recovery Project, which is designed to support the government’s resilient recovery program.

Experts have long warned that deforestation and rampant construction could bring disaster to the slopes of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Many fear landslides could happen again as heavy rains become more severe due to climate change, while unregulated construction continues to increase residents' vulnerability.

The World Bank will support Sierra Leone in its efforts to recover from severe landslides and floods in Freetown in August 2017. The Freetown Emergency Recovery Project will finance rehabilitation of selected critical infrastructure in Freetown and strengthen government capacity for managing disaster risk.

The Freetown mudslides in August left about 3,000 people homeless. Freetown was initially built to house 300,000 people, but ended up with more than 1 million inhabitants in 2015. The uncontrolled urban sprawl of Freetown has resulted in homes being built in areas at risk, and the government's responses have been too short-term oriented to address the issue.

The extreme rainfall, combined with construction on flood-prone areas, poor waste management leading to water blockages and human encroachment on creeks and wetlands that act as a natural drainage system for flood water all contributed to this disaster.