FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Rescue officials in Sierra Leone warned Friday that the chances of finding survivors in the debris of this week’s mudslides “are getting smaller every day,” as bereaved and homeless survivors faced the magnitude of all they have lost.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Rescue officials in Sierra Leone warned Friday that the chances of finding survivors in the debris of this week’s mudslides “are getting smaller every day,” as bereaved and homeless survivors faced the magnitude of all they have lost.
Burials and rescue efforts pressed on amid the threat of further disaster. Up to 450 bodies have been recovered in and around the capital, Freetown, after Monday’s mudslides and flooding, according to Dr. Simeon Owiss Koroma, the government’s chief consultant forensic pathologist. Some 600 others are missing and feared dead.
At least 122 of the victims are children, and a similar number have been orphaned by the disaster, the aid group Save the Children said.
Sayo Jalloh, who lost a son, a brother and 15 other family members, has been too numb to mourn. At a camp for those made homeless in the hard-hit Regent neighborhood, she has been having trouble sleeping and pleads with her traumatized daughter to eat.
“I just keep wondering why I don’t see them or even dream about them,” she said of her lost relatives.
“It just seems like when someone has travelled. I can’t even locate the house where we used to live anymore, other than to just point at the area.”
Burials have begun in a cemetery that holds victims of the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak that killed thousands.
Many people have been unable to find loved ones and victims often are too mangled and decomposed to be identified.