A catastrophic garbage mound collapse at a landfill site in the outskirts of Guinea’s capital Conakry has left at least 30 people dead, government officials confirmed on Sunday. The disaster struck before dawn at approximately 2:00 a.m. GMT, when accumulated rainfall weakened the structure of the rubbish mound, sending it sliding onto informal residential homes in the Dar-es-salam neighbourhood of Bbessia district. Six additional people were left with severe, life-threatening injuries in the incident.
Local neighbourhood leader Lancine Sylla was among the first to respond to the emergency, telling AFP earlier that recovery teams had already recovered 18 bodies transferred to the city’s morgue, and warned that the death toll was expected to rise. By Sunday afternoon, official government statements confirmed the final toll of 30 fatalities.
In a sign of the ongoing response effort, Guinea’s Minister of Territorial Administration Djenabou Toure traveled directly to the accident site to oversee operations. Photographers from AFP on the ground witnessed heavy excavator machinery working through the unstable collapsed waste to search for any additional victims, as hundreds of local onlookers gathered at the perimeter of the disaster zone waiting for updates.
A troubling detail has emerged in the aftermath of the collapse: government authorities had already ordered evacuation of the residential area and implemented preliminary safety measures around the landfill in recent days, after identifying a high risk of structural failure following sustained heavy rainfall. Despite these pre-emptive warnings, many residents remained in their homes adjacent to the site, leaving them vulnerable when the collapse occurred. Search and rescue operations were still ongoing as of Sunday afternoon, with emergency workers continuing to comb through the rubble for any missing persons.