Last week houses and property worth millions of leones were destroyed at the Kissy Brooke community, east of Freetown, after a heavy down pour of rain, leaving many residents homeless.
“We had to do rapid needs assessment with the registration of victims and within seventy-two hours there were responses, providing food, clothing and cleaning of the community”, he said, adding that they also put together a voluntary team in community to do mainly volunteer work and to reduce the risk of further disaster.
Kamara disclosed that there were several projects they had undertaken to mitigate disaster in that community.
“In 2012 we collaborated with the United Nations Development Programme to clean that community in a project worth Le15 million. We were physically involved in the process and the project was successful in cutting of the culverts and constructing a retaining wall that was allowing the free flow of water”, he said.
He said that that was a critical project that helped mitigate disaster in the community and claimed that the culvert was blocked because of the activities in the community, especially around the dump site where bull dozers had compressed rubbish to create more space.
Flood victim, Richard Tholley, said that he had lived in the community since 2005 and that they had never encountered such an incident of flooding, adding that that happened only after the drainage was compressed by trucks depositing garbage at the ‘bormeh’ and causing the blockage that stopped water from flowing when it rained.
He claimed to have lost all their furniture in the house and that they had nowhere to sleep because his apartment was completely destroyed by the flood.
He confirmed that there were more than five thousand people living in that community and that departments housing more than five hundred people had also been destroyed.
A land owner, Alhaji Fuad Serry, said they had lived in the community since 1985 and that it was only after government decided to use that area for huge garbage deposal that they started experiencing overflowing of water.
He added: “there was nothing like flooding before this time. It only started after the dumping site was created in this area and because the drainage had been blocked completely.”
