The death toll from the landslide that occurred on Monday in a hard-to-reach area of southern Ethiopia has now risen to 257 and could reach 500, the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) reported on Thursday.
The landslide is the deadliest known in Ethiopia, the second most populous country on the African continent, where more than three-quarters of its 120 million inhabitants live in rural areas.
Three days after the disaster, residents continued to search for victims, digging through the thick layer of clay with their bare hands or shovels.
The death toll “reached 257 as of July 24” and “is expected to rise to 500 deaths, according to information communicated by local authorities,” wrote the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its latest situation report published Thursday.
More than 15,500 people living in surrounding areas “at high risk of further landslides” were awaiting evacuation by the authorities, OCHA continued.
Among them are “at least 1,320 children under five and 5,293 pregnant and breastfeeding women.”
Aid has started to arrive in this remote area of southern Ethiopia, located nearly 500 kilometers and more than ten hours by road from the capital Addis Ababa.
Shovels and weeders
The disaster occurred in Kencho Shacha Gozdi kebele (smallest administrative division), a rural and hilly area in Ethiopia’s Southern Regional State.
Heavy rainfall fell there for a long time on Sunday evening. A section of hill collapsed on Monday morning, affecting several homes before another landslide engulfed the many residents who rushed to help.
“We heard that a landslide had destroyed two houses, so we ran to the valley to help, and my son followed me. When we got there, the landslide had destroyed two more houses. Then a huge mudslide submerged everyone, including my son,” resident Getachew Geza told AFP.
The total number of missing persons remains unknown.
Armed with meager agricultural tools – shovels and hoes – residents were busy trying to find their buried loved ones, AFP journalists observed.
Solomon Tsoma recovered 12 bodies, “seven of my uncle’s children, as well as my brother’s children,” he said. “But we were unable to find my sister’s body.”
“Isolated and mountainous” area
In an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, OCHA’s head in Ethiopia, Paul Handley, explained that getting “heavy excavation equipment into the affected area” which is “remote and mountainous” was “a challenge, particularly because of the state of the roads”.
According to AFP journalists on the scene, the road leading to the disaster site is not paved for several dozen kilometers.
The Red Cross began distributing relief supplies on Tuesday, and the federal government, UN agencies and international NGOs are deploying teams to the affected area.
Around 18% of Ethiopia’s population (21.4 million people) already depends on humanitarian aid in normal times and 4.5 million people are currently displaced by conflict or climate disasters (drought, floods, etc.), according to the UN.
According to local residents, people often choose to live in the valleys because it is less cold there.
“This is not the first disaster of this type. Last year, more than 20 people were killed. Every rainy season, people die due to landslides and heavy rains in this area,” a resident of a woreda (district) near the disaster site said on Tuesday.
The “long” rainy season began in June in much of Ethiopia, including the Southern Ethiopian Regional State. It is expected to last until September.
Southern Ethiopia State is among many areas that were hit by floods in April and May in Ethiopia, during the “short” rainy season.