Faith Nyasuguta
A landslide in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde killed at least 14 people attending a funeral service on Sunday.
Those affected had gathered at the top of a hill for a memorial service for five people when the ground collapsed under part of the audience.
The search had been suspended late Sunday evening before a planned resumption on Monday morning.
Marie Claire Mendouga, 50, attended the ceremony but her tent was not affected by the landslide.
“We had just started to dance when the ground collapsed,” she said.
She said she “went to dig with my hands” to try to get people out from under the earth, and was still covered in the brown clay from the site.
Rosette Ngeufack, 50, is among the mourners. She says she saw the ground collapse on scores of people including her two sons.Ngeufack says she is still searching for her 24-year-old son who was buried by the landslide alongside his motorcycle.
She says she left the Yaounde central hospital at 2 a.m. after hospital staff reassured her that her 21-year-old son, also a victim of the landslide, is responding to treatment.
It is a tradition in Cameroon for communities to organize funeral events in towns after burial of their community members in villages.
People who attended the funeral prior to the landslide said they had prayed for the departed and were sharing drinks and food when the unfortunate incident occurred.
PANICKY SEARCH
The disaster is said to have taken place in Yaounde’s working-class district of Damas, on its eastern outskirts.
Four large white tents were on the hill’s summit, at the edge of what seemed to be a ridge, beyond which the ground had disappeared.
Police pick-up trucks were hauling away bodies covered by white sheets early on Sunday evening.
A police cordon prevented journalists from getting closer to the scene.
Emergency and humanitarian services struggled to make their way to the site, as hundreds of people frantically searched for loved ones. A number in the crowd wept as emergency workers scoured the area.
Late Sunday evening, a member of the emergency services who sought anonymity said the death toll remained at 11, and the search for more victims would resume Monday morning.
In the crowd behind the security cordon, tears were streaming down faces.
“I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep,” Mendouga said.
“You are sitting down, you have people behind you and afterwards, they’re dead.”
In Cameroon, landslides occur relatively frequently, but they are rarely as deadly as Sunday’s incident in Yaounde.
Forty-three people were killed in the western city of Bafoussam in 2019 when a landslide triggered by heavy rains swept away a dozen precarious dwellings built on the side of a hill.
