Landslides Kill 150 in Ethiopia

Landslides Kill 150 in Ethiopia - The New York Times

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Two Landslides Kill More Than 150 People in Ethiopia

A waterlogged hillside above a village gave way, burying several houses in mud. Neighbors and rescue workers who had rushed to help were hit by a second slide.

More than 150 people were killed in southwestern Ethiopia on Monday after a landslide flattened several houses in a village following days of heavy rain, and neighbors who rushed to dig out those buried under the mud were hit with a second landslide about an hour later.

The first landslide struck the village in the Geze district between 8:30 and 9 a.m. on Monday, said Habtamu Fetena, who heads the local government’s emergency response. Nearly 300 people from two neighboring villages ran to the area to help and began digging through the mud by hand.

Then about an hour later, without warning, more mud slid down the hillside above the village, and killed many of those trying to help their neighbors.

“They had no clue that the land they were standing on was about to swallow them,” Mr. Fetana said.

The first landslide killed entire families as mud rolled down the hillside, officials said. Teachers and health care workers were among those killed in the second landslide. Among those killed in the second landslide was the local administrative leader, who had also rushed to the scene. Most of those who have died were men, but pregnant women and children were also among the dead, Mr. Fetana said.

The death toll was expected to rise as more victims were pulled from the mud. As of Tuesday afternoon, just 10 people had been pulled alive from the landslide, officials said.

The largely rural area had experienced several days of heavy rain, hampering rescue efforts and saturating the land, causing multiple landslides.

The devastated village lies in a region that is increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In recent years, East Africa has experienced increasingly extreme weather, including long droughts followed by intense storms, according to the United Nations. A third of the countries considered most susceptible to the risks of climate change are in southern and eastern Africa.

The area where the landslides occurred is impossible to reach by heavy machinery, so villagers and rescue workers were forced to dig by hand. Images from the scene showed a gash in the green hillside where the mud slid down, with rescue workers, knee-deep in the mud, using hoes and shovels, or their bare hands, to search for victims.

The area has seen disasters like this before, another local administrator, Dagmawi Ayele, told the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation. While some villages were moved after previous disasters, landslides were now occurring in unexpected regions, he added.

Lynsey Chutel covers South Africa and the countries that make up southern Africa from Johannesburg. More about Lynsey Chutel

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