Fears for 600 still missing in Sierra Leone floods

“There is basic need for food, water, sanitation equipment and medical assistance. Since it is still the rainy season, further flooding is also a possibility,” she warned.

The sentiment among those in the disaster areas had shifted from shock and grief to anger at what is an annual problem in Freetown, though never before on this scale.

“There is some frustration over the regularity of flooding and destruction during the rainy season and its effects,” Fox said.

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

Society 4 Climate Change Communication (S4CCC), a local environment group, has called the tragedy a “wake-up call”.

Deforestation, a lack of urban planning and vulnerability to climate change had all played a part, it said.

The UN said contingency plans were being put into place in case of an outbreak of waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea, as dirty water stagnates in the streets.

Many homes are now without a water supply due to damage to a reservoir near Regent, according to the Guma Valley Water Company.

Sulaiman Zaino Parker, an official with Freetown’s city council, said that 150 burials took place on Tuesday evening and that many victims would be laid to rest in graves alongside those of the country’s last humanitarian disaster, the Ebola crisis, in nearby Waterloo.

“We have started burying some of the mutilated and decomposed bodies. All the corpses will be given a dignified burial with Muslim and Christian prayers,” Parker said.

The graves would be specially marked for future identification, he added.

The Vatican said in a statement that Pope Francis “prays for all who have died, and upon their grieving families and friends he invokes the divine blessings of strength and consolation.”

Guinean President Alpha Conde visited in solidarity with Sierra Leone on Tuesday and was galvanising aid from west African nations, his aide Naby Youssouf Kiridi Bangoura told AFP.

Three days of torrential rain culminated on Monday in the Regent mudslide and torrential flooding elsewhere in the city, one of the world’s wettest urban areas.

Freetown is hit each year by flooding during several months of rain, and in 2015 bad weather killed 10 people and left thousands homeless.

Sierra Leone ranked 179th out of 188 countries on the UN Development Programme’s 2016 Human Development Index, a basket of data combining life expectancy, education and income and other factors.