Tuesday marked the final day of national mourning for the victims of Monday’s disaster and the bereaved relatives and friends they leave behind. The flags will once again be flown high, but that doesn’t mean we should all forget about what happened that day and what this nation lost. Many, including myself, have labeled this a “natural disaster” but that’s only partially true. Mudslides have been happening in nature since long before humans were around, but countless manmade factors made this the tragic, deadly disaster it has become.
“Poverty is not natural and the overcrowding into poor housing that it causes is not natural,” said Tony Redmond, a Professor of International Emergency Medicine. “Even the extreme climatic and environmental conditions that precipitated the recent devastating mudslide on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown, are a function of man’s unnatural relationship with nature. But what to do about it?”
The article he wrote tries and largely fails to answer this question, but the government of Sierra Leone is currently faced with this exact question. How will they prevent this from happening again? Mortome was by no means unique in their vulnerability to disaster; countless communities across Freetown – and no doubt across the country – are prone to future mudslides, floods, and whatever else nature has to throw at us.
International funding and aid poured into the Regent area following the disaster and continues to arrive as bereaved families and displaced people try to reckon with what comes next. What is the long-term plan for all that money? Who is making sure it doesn’t disappear into the pockets of the well-connected elite like the Ebola money? The government has yet to announce or even create a budget for how the millions of foreign aid will be spent. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we address the problem, we have to identify the problem.
In a pointed Amnesty International article by Makmid Kamara, the Deputy Director of Global Issues and former Sierra Leonean broadcast journalist, he argues that government policies partially contributed to the high death toll.
“The scale of the human tragedy in Freetown is, sadly, very much man-made,” Kamara said. “The terrible aftermath of the mudslides in Sierra Leone, which have left more than 3,000 people homeless, grimly illustrates the human cost of the government’s failure to implement housing and land policies.”
Both Redmond and Kamara pointed to failed implementation of housing, land, and environmental policies as factors driving thousands of people to continue living in disaster-prone areas. The policies exist but they’re just words on a page when enforcement is limited or nonexistent. As I understand it, many of the structures in Mortome were illegal or unregistered and were threatened with demolition on many occasions. I only just recently learned about the notorious murder of Ministry of Lands employee Kenneth Moore during an attempted illegal housing demolition. The fear this instilled in government officials might have contributed to the low rates of land and housing policy enforcement in Mortome.
As I said yesterday, if the government changes nothing in the wake of this disaster, then those people died for nothing. Change comes when we identify the manmade factors in this disaster and act to eradicate them. We might not be able to stop the rains from falling or prevent a mudslide, but we can relocate communities away from low-lying, disaster prone areas. We can make land more affordable and accessible to low-income families. We can step-up enforcement of existing land and housing policies. We can better monitor developing environmental disasters to prevent people from building in their path. There are so many steps the government can and must take following this tragedy and the people must hold them accountable. If they don’t, then disasters like this might become a rainy-season tradition.
Timothy’s Take
Wednesday August 23, 2017.
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