Flash floods in Sierra Leone during the rainy season seems to be an annual event. In August last year Freetown witnessed a morbid mudslide and left trail of bodies in its wake.
As we are heading to the rainy season, the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society (SLRC) has engaged members in disaster prone communities on how to identify early warning signs that would help community member to save lives and properties.
Jestina Harding is one of the beneficiaries representing Mortomeh, Regent she said learning how to identifying hazards was very important. “Hazards are disaster awaiting trigger by manmade activity. I can now identify hazards in my community and advice people on what to do, so that they would be victims in the eventuality of a disaster,” she explained.
Dominic Massaquoi from Kaningo, Lumley said, “when people are ignorant about their environment and treat it any how it would boomerang back to them in the unkind nature.”
SLRC Disaster Management Coordinator, Thomas Abu, “We are now not only targeting the affected victims we have extended support to the host communities as well. The affected people of last year’s mudslide had to migrate to neighboring communities… we are now trying to raise awareness amongst member in these host communities on how they should prepared themselves in the case of unforeseen disasters within their environment.”
He said in this Community Early Warning System (CEWS) training “we try to look at particular hazards at this point in time, since we are already in the rainy season and the flooding is always prominent in Sierra Leone and in Freetown in particular.”
The SLRC Disaster Management Coordinator said as part of the intervention a dedicated emergency number, which is 300, could be dial to report any disaster related incident.
Lead Facilitator Henry Nyakeh said, “communities need to drive their own disaster risk reduction activities and early warning system is a way in which we would be able to empower members of these communities to be able to setup a functional early warning system.”
“…by early warning we mean signals that disaster management department may be aware of but which may not be very common amongst the beneficiaries in the community. Thus, we want to raise the awareness on the signs and symptoms of flood disaster as it may occur.”
“We are going to embark upon is emphatic house to house sanitization giving them signs and symptoms of flooding in those places we are going to tell them about situation that may lead to dangerous disasters relating to floods.
OG/21/4/18
By Ophaniel Gooding
Monday April 23, 2018.
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