originally published in the New York Times, United States
Torrential rain in eastern Uganda touched off a series of mudslides late Monday night, killing at least 83 people and causing devastation in villages, state emergency officials said.
Three landslides sent mounds of earth hurtling toward villages in the district of Bududa along the slopes of Mount Elgon near the Kenyan border, destroying houses and other buildings.
The local community council said that 320 people were missing, government relief officials said, and so the death toll was expected to rise.
“Many are missing,” said Musa Ecweru, a state minister for natural disasters, who was in Bududa. “Members of local government are dead. A rich businessman was killed. Members of my own family are missing.”
Most of the buildings that were destroyed were mud-grass huts, Mr. Ecweru said, but a medical clinic constructed with cement also collapsed.
“It was washed away,” he said. “Portions of the lands just broke off from the tops of hills, carrying cattle and goats. Many of these animals are now lying around.” A church where people were seeking refuge was also swept away. The local news media reported that the rains had lasted for seven hours on Monday night. The Ugandan Red Cross is surveying the area and assessing the damage, with help from the police and the army, Mr. Ecweru said.
Even though this is typically the start of the region’s traditional dry season, Uganda has been hit by heavy rainfall recently. Underdevelopment in the isolated part of eastern Uganda has exacerbated the damage, he said.
“Without proper vegetation, the land is too soft,” Mr. Ecweru said. Meteorologists are warning of more heavy rain.
Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano and Uganda’s second largest mountain, at nearly 14,000 feet, serves as a catchment for a number of nearby rivers.
Barbara Wybar, a teacher from Montreal who runs a vocational school in Bududa, said the rains were the worst she had seen.
“As it kept raining I thought, ‘This is going to be a disaster, there’s going to be a landslide,’ ” she said.
Ms. Wybar, who said she lived on the other side of the district, away from where the landslides occurred, said she had heard relief helicopters throughout the night. Ms. Wybar has been visiting Bududa since 2003 and living there since 2007, and she said that poverty had played a major role in the disaster.
In the past, she said, people did not live on the area’s steep slopes.
“But they are so poor here, and the population is exploding,” she said. “People live and farm everywhere.”
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