Ethiopian police officers surround the site of a landslide at rubbish dump in Addis Ababa as excavators aid
rescue efforts on March 12, 2017. Elias Meseret / AP Photo
ADDIS ABABA // At least 46 people were killed when a mountain of rubbish gave way at a massive dumping site on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital.
Most of the dead were women and children, and more bodies are expected to be found, said Addis Ababa city spokeswoman Dagmawit Moges.
Addis Ababa mayor Diriba Kuma said 37 people had been rescued and were receiving medical treatment. Ms Dagmawit said two had serious injuries.
It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse at the Koshe landfill on Saturday night. The landfill has been a dumping ground for the capital’s rubbish for more than 50 years.
The landslide buried several makeshift homes and concrete buildings, and officials vowed to relocate people living at the landfill.
About 150 people were there when the landslide occurred, said Assefa Teklemahimanot, a resident.
Many of them had been scavenging items to make a living, but others were people who lived there because renting homes, largely built of mud and sticks, was relatively inexpensive.
Six excavators dug through the debris on Sunday as some onlookers cried and others stood waiting anxiously for news of loved ones.
“My house was right inside there,” said Tebeju Asres, pointing to where one of the excavators was digging in deep, black mud. “My mother and three of my sisters were there when the landslide happened. Now I don’t know the fate of all of them.”
The dumping of rubbish at the site had stopped for years but resumed in recent months after farmers in a nearby region where a new landfill complex was being built blocked dumping in their area.
Smaller collapses have occurred at Koshe – “dirty” in the local Amharic language – in the past two years, but only two or three people were killed, a resident said.
“In the long run, we will conduct a resettling programme to relocate people who live in and around the landfill,” the Addis Ababa mayor said.
Around 500 waste-pickers are believed to work at the landfill every day, sorting through the debris from the capital’s estimated 4 million residents. City officials say close to 300,000 tonnes of waste are collected each year from the capital, most of it dumped at the landfill.
Since 2010, city officials have warned that the landfill was running out of room and was being closed in by nearby housing and schools.
City officials in recent years have been trying to turn the rubbish into a source of clean energy with a US$120 million (Dh440m) investment. The Koshe waste-to-energy facility, which has been under construction since 2013, is expected to generate 50 megawatts of electricity upon completion.
Ethiopia, which has one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, is under a state of emergency imposed in October after several months of sometimes deadly protests demanding wider political freedoms.
