At least 31 people have been killed and 22 injured after a towering heap of refuse collapsed onto nearby homes in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, during heavy overnight rain on August 23.
The disaster struck at the Dar-es-Salam dump, the largest landfill in Conakry, at around 02:00 local time. A mountainous mound of rubbish gave way, burying houses and trapping residents under tonnes of waste. A second section of the site then collapsed in three successive stages, sweeping away people who had rushed to help survivors of the initial slide.
Two Waves of Destruction
Eyewitness Robert Kamano Saa told the Associated Press that the second collapse was catastrophic. “People tried to come to the rescue after the first section collapsed. They came running and climbed onto the refuse to see if anyone was there,” Saa said. “That was when the second section collapsed in three successive stages, cascading down. And that is what poured onto the people.”
Mamadouba Bangoura, who lost his home, said he and his family were woken by a loud noise as the first wave hit, which narrowly missed them. “The second wave came. That is what knocked over, pushed the house, and it fell,” he told Reuters. “There were a lot of people buried. It is very, very difficult to talk about it because seeing a human being lose their life like that is pathetic.”
One woman told local media that her five children had died in the disaster. Neighbourhood leader Lancine Sylla told AFP that rescue teams had pulled out 18 bodies and taken them to the morgue, warning that the final toll was likely to rise.
Military Mobilised for Search
The Guinean government deployed significant resources, including military personnel, to search for survivors. Excavators were brought in to comb through the scattered waste as residents gathered at the edge of the site. Health Minister Khaité Sall visited the injured in hospital and promised free medical care and government support for affected families.
Prime Minister Mamadou Oury Bah personally visited the scene to oversee the emergency response and coordinate relief efforts. The government has not yet announced a formal death toll update as rescue operations continue.
A Long-Overdue Closure
The collapse had been widely anticipated. The government had recently ordered residents living near the landfill to evacuate, though many chose to stay. Opposition figure and former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, who is currently in exile, called the disaster “a tragedy that plunges us into dismay.”
“This tragedy is all the more worrying because the closure of the landfill had been announced for this Sunday, 23 August,” Diallo said. The closure, which was supposed to prevent exactly this type of catastrophe, came too late for the victims.
A Pattern of Failures
Guinea has experienced similar tragedies at the same site before. In 2017, a collapse at the Dar-es-Salam dump killed 10 people. Despite that warning, residents continued to live in the shadow of the landfill, and the government failed to enforce previous eviction orders.
The disaster has reignited criticism of Conakry’s waste management infrastructure. The city of over two million people produces vast quantities of refuse that is often dumped in open-air sites rather than properly managed in engineered landfills. The Dar-es-Salam dump, which has grown into a massive hill of accumulated waste, has long been recognised as a public health and safety hazard.
Political Fallout and Calls for Accountability
Critics have pointed to the government’s failure to close the site on schedule, despite repeated promises and warnings. The collapse comes at a sensitive political moment for Guinea, which has been under military rule since a 2021 coup. The junta-led government has faced growing pressure over its handling of public services and infrastructure.
International humanitarian organisations are monitoring the situation as rescue teams continue to search through the debris. The United Nations has not yet issued a formal response, but the scale of the disaster is expected to draw attention from the global community.
For the residents of Dar-es-Salam, the tragedy has left an indelible mark. Families are still searching for missing relatives, and the full extent of the damage may not be known for days. The collapse has exposed the deadly consequences of urban neglect, where inadequate infrastructure and poor governance converge with devastating human cost.
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