分类： society

A catastrophic garbage landslide that swept through a residential neighborhood in Guinea’s capital Conakry early Sunday has left at least 30 people dead, 22 injured, and a community grappling with overwhelming grief and anger over what locals say was a preventable disaster. The collapse, triggered by days of heavy, seasonably intense rain, buried multiple homes in Conakry’s Dar es Salam neighborhood, turning a quiet overnight into a chaotic nightmare of destruction and loss.

Abou Hamza, a local community activist whose neighborhood sits at the foot of the massive suburban dump, says residents spent months sounding alarm bells about the looming risk. Hamza told reporters at the disaster site that young local organizers held multiple outreach meetings with government officials to push for the dump’s relocation, a promise authorities had made publicly one year prior. But their warnings were dismissed, he said, leaving the community exposed to the disaster that finally unfolded over the weekend. “The state failed to take steps to close the dump,” Hamza said, a statement that underscores the widespread anger over official inaction.

By Sunday morning, the scene was one of raw chaos and grief. Heavy excavators rumbled across mounds of rotting garbage, digging through debris in search of remains and possible survivors, while dozens of local residents — including children — gathered at the crest of the garbage piles, scanning the wreckage for traces of missing loved ones. Rescue crews ferried injured survivors out on stretchers, trailed by distraught family members waiting for word of the missing. Grieving women, shaken by the sudden loss, huddled together in small groups, sobbing and holding one another through the shock.

Survivors recount terrifying moments of the collapse that came without warning in the middle of the night. Alhassane Camara, a young neighborhood resident, was asleep alongside his two younger brothers when unusual rumbling signaled the slide was beginning. “I was sleeping with my two brothers… there were strange noises behind me. Then I saw things fall,” he recalled. One of his little brothers was killed instantly, buried under the tide of garbage, while the other was pulled alive from the wreckage. The rest of his family — his mother, grandmother and sisters — all escaped unharmed. “It was God who helped us,” Camara said.

Another resident, Aboubacar Camara, who managed to evacuate his own family to safety, described a second, deadlier slide that hit just as local residents rushed in to rescue those trapped by the first collapse. “Around 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning we heard a slide, screams outside, everyone was screaming,” he said. Moments after he stepped outside with his wife, the second landslide hit, burying the group of neighbors who had gone in to pull out initial victims. “Everyone who went there to help, they all ended up buried in it,” he said.

Guinea’s Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the disaster site on Sunday, where he pledged government support for the response, saying authorities were moving quickly to provide medical care for the injured and financial and logistical support for families displaced by the tragedy. Notably, the government had announced evacuation and site security operations for the landfill in recent days, acknowledging the elevated landslide risk brought by the region’s extended, intense rainy season. But those measures came too late to prevent the disaster.

Opposition figures have weighed in on the tragedy, with exiled former prime minister and leading opposition figure Cellou Dalein Diallo describing the incident as a devastating tragedy that has left the nation in dismay. Diallo claimed that the official closure of the dangerous dump had actually been scheduled for Sunday — the same day the collapse occurred. He is now calling for a full, transparent independent investigation into the circumstances that led to the disaster, saying authorities must be held accountable and draw clear lessons to prevent similar losses in the future.

In response to a string of crippling national network failures that have already been tied to preventable deaths, Australia’s three largest mobile network operators have joined forces with the government’s national emergency call oversight body to roll out a critical public education campaign on accessing the 000 emergency line when primary networks go down.

The joint initiative, launched Monday by industry giants Optus, Telstra and TPG Telecom (owner of the Vodafone network), comes in partnership with the Triple-Zero Custodian, the government office established in 2024 to oversee Australia’s national emergency call system. The campaign is designed to arm everyday Australians with clear, actionable guidance to reach first responders even when their home network suffers an outage.

“This campaign gives Australians practical, easy-to-find information about how their phones connect to emergency services, and what steps they can take if their regular provider’s network is unavailable,” said Jane McNamara, a corporate spokesperson for Optus, the carrier at the center of the most recent high-stakes outage. “By raising public awareness of existing safeguards like the emergency camp-on system and delivering simple guidance that people can remember under pressure, we are helping Australians better prepare for the moments when reliable access to 000 matters more than anything else.”

The catalyst for this urgent public outreach is the widespread Optus outage that struck in September 2025, which blocked 000 calls across large swathes of Australia: South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and far western New South Wales. Over the 14-hour outage, 75% of all 000 calls placed through the network failed to connect, and official records have linked two preventable deaths to the communications failure.

In the wake of the disaster, the Australian Communications and Media Authority launched legal action against Optus, alleging the carrier breached two separate legal regulatory obligations more than 1,000 times. An independent investigation commissioned by Optus itself later traced the outage to multiple overlapping errors that occurred during a routine network upgrade carried out by Optus teams and contractor Nokia.

The new public campaign breaks down how existing emergency backup systems work, and clarifies the different status messages that iOS and Android devices display when network access is compromised. At its core is an explanation of the “emergency camp-on” function, a pre-existing safeguard that automatically routes a 000 call from an unavailable home network to a competing carrier’s active network, if local coverage from another provider is available.

The guidance outlines key steps for users attempting to access this backup system: Callers will typically experience five seconds of silence at the start of the first call attempt while the system routes the connection. If the first attempt does not connect, users are instructed to hang up and retry, and on subsequent attempts, to stay on the line for up to 60 seconds to allow the routing process to complete.

Luke Coleman, chief executive of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, the national peak body for the telecommunications sector, emphasized that the campaign is intended to address gaps in public knowledge that could cost lives during a crisis. “Our priority is to ensure Australians are equipped with simple advice they can recall and use in a worst-case scenario if they need to call 000 and find their usual network is unavailable,” Coleman explained.

The campaign also clarifies what different device status messages mean for users: If emergency camp-on access is available, iPhones will display “SOS” or “SOS only” in the status bar, while Android devices will show “Emergency calls only”, “No service – emergency calls only”, or a dedicated SOS icon. If a device displays a plain “No service” message, however, no mobile network coverage is available at all. In that scenario, users are advised to locate a working landline, public payphone, or connect to a Wi-Fi network to place an emergency call.

A 34-year-old Australian mother who survived a brutal shark mauling at one of Sydney’s most popular public beaches says she is ready to embrace the new lease on life she has been given, after months of grueling recovery that included emergency surgery and the amputation of one arm.

Leah Stewart was attacked by the predator during an early morning swim at Coogee Beach back in June, suffering multiple laceration bites across her arms and legs. The incident was one of a string of deadly shark encounters recorded across Australia throughout 2026, which have claimed multiple lives already this year.

Following the attack, Stewart was placed in an induced coma by emergency medical teams to stabilize her condition, and underwent multiple urgent surgical procedures to save her life – one of which required the amputation of one of her arms.

In her first public statement since the attack, shared via social media on Monday, Stewart opened up about her challenging recovery journey, and expressed profound gratitude to the thousands of supporters who have rallied around her. An online community fundraiser organized on her behalf has now raised more than AU$550,000, equal to roughly US$394,000, to cover her ongoing medical and living costs.

“After what has been an incredibly difficult few months, I’m so happy that I’ve progressed enough to build some independence, and I can finally see some light after all of this,” Stewart wrote. “I want you to know that I feel like I’ve been given a second chance at life, and I’m not going to waste it.”

Stewart said she had been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from her loved ones and even complete strangers from across the globe, adding that the kindness she has received has inspired her to focus on healing rather than resentment. “You’ve inspired me to get better, not bitter,” she wrote.

She confirmed that the online fundraiser would be officially closed now that the target has been far exceeded. The funds will allow her to complete her recovery in the comfort of her own home, and will also cover the cost of future adaptive medical treatments and prosthetic care.

“I still have a long way to go, but my recovery has been remarkable, and a huge part of that is because of the absolute army of love, support, prayers and encouragement surrounding my family and I from all over the world,” Stewart added.

Stewart’s full account of the attack will be broadcast this weekend on Nine Network’s flagship current affairs program *60 Minutes*. In pre-released excerpts from the interview, she described coming face-to-face with the shark before the attack, saying she will never forget the “horrific” sight of the animal. “I’ll never forget its face – it was a monster,” she said.

Recounting the terrifying moment the shark latched onto her leg, Stewart said her first and only thought was of her young daughter, August. “I just thought, ‘she’s not going to have a mum. She’s gonna grow up without a mum’,” she recalled. Fighting back tears, she added, “I couldn’t handle that, I didn’t want her to not have a mum. I just thought, I’ve got to fight it, do everything I can to be here.”

The attack on Stewart comes amid a marked rise in shark encounters along Australia’s coastlines this year. In January, four separate shark attacks were recorded across the country in just a 48-hour window, including one that left a 12-year-old boy dead from his injuries. In May, a spearfisher was killed by a shark off the coast of Queensland, and a father of two died after being attacked by a 4-meter great white shark in Western Australia.

At the peak of Greece’s annual summer tourist rush, green icons marking commercial jets packed with holidaymakers stack up across the radar screens of Athens air traffic controllers, creating a high-stakes logistical puzzle that tests even the most experienced professionals. “Look at this sky, it’s crazy, there’s no room for any more planes!” said Olga Toki, vice-president of the Association of Air Traffic Controllers of Greece, summing up the unprecedented pressure facing Greece’s overstretched aviation workforce this summer.