Experts issue new landslide warning

Last Monday’s mudslide, drifting from 800 metres high and pushing down significant amounts of debris, cracked from weakened water concentration point in the protected area which Uganda Wildlife Authority marked out in 1993 and re-planted a year later.

Kampala

Experts have put government on notice that another devastating landslip is likely within the Mt. Elgon range if invasive human activities there are not halted immediately.

The warning came hours before Mr Musa Ecweru, the junior minister for disaster preparedness, told this newspaper last evening that the government is looking for Shs200 billion to buy land to re-settle some 500,000 people presently living in “high-risk areas” countrywide.

Deadly rocks
Earlier, Ms Mary Gorretti Kitutu, the environment information systems specialist at the National Environment Management Authority, said settlers below “hanging rocks” on the mountain slopes risk being hit by “debris flow” following intensified rains. “Constant cultivation has loosened the soils; they are easily washed downhill by runoff water,” she said, adding: “Debris flows (mudslides) are one of the most dangerous of all mass wasting events. They can occur suddenly and inundate an entire village in a matter of minutes - a case of what should have happened at Nametsi.”

On March 1, broken wet uphill soils; powered by rolling rocks and gurgling storm water thundered in Bududa District, flattening three villages and killing an more than 300 residents, most of them in Nametsi.

91 bodies recovered
Bududa Chief Administrative Officer, Mr Oswan Vitalis, said UPDF soldiers and volunteers, who have been working only with garden tools to dig trhough the thick sludge, had, by yesterday morning, retrieved a total 91 bodies.

The number of confirmed school children among the dead has risen to 57 from the 35 earlier reported. And officials say more than 1, 000 pupils in the affected area remain stranded after three primary schools there closed temporarily in the wake of the disaster.

On Wednesday, Ms Kitutu, who is also studying the landslide phenomenon in Manjiya County – where the latest mudslide occurred for her PhD degree programme, told this newspaper that scientists had anticipated and warned government of an impending catastrophe there due to rapid destruction of the surrounding vegetation. “The grass and trees that hold the soils together have been cleared for agriculture whereas not much water can flow downhill if there’s a lot of vegetative cover,” she said.

Last Monday’s mudslide, drifting from 800 metres high and pushing down significant amounts of debris, cracked from weakened water concentration point in the protected area which Uganda Wildlife Authority marked out in 1993 and re-planted a year later. According to official accounts, the local communities, indoctrinated by elected leaders that their land was up for grabs, moved to chop the trees; set up farmlands and built huts in what in later years became permanent residences.

Prior warning
When contacted, Mr Moses Mapesa, the executive director of Uganda Wildlife Authority, referred this newspaper to an opinion article run in a local daily on Tuesday in which he argued: “This (interference) resulted into several cycles of fresh encroachment in 1996, 2001 and 2005 fuelled by elective politicking. There have been several warnings and landslides in Bududa before.”

Minister Ecweru said high population growth and the people’s culture that binds them to the place of birth derailed previous attempts to relocate them from the foot of Mt. Elgon after a landslide there in 1997 killed 48 people and displaced 10,000 others.

“I want to tell the people settled in the high-risk areas that they must love their lives more than the place of dwelling,” the minister said as reports emerged of local resistance to plans to settle residents in affected villages at temporary camps in Bulucheke.

Reluctant victims
Other sources, however, indicated that the lack of alternative land derailed the initial re-settlement programme that some donors this time round are eager to bankroll. Bududa District chairman Wilson Watira said last evening that they are trying to inform the reluctant people, particularly in Nametsi and neighbouring villages, of the lurking danger so that they vacate the place.

“Do you know that here when a person dies, relatives sleep near the body because they believe that [the dead person] is still theirs?” Mr Watira said of the odd but locally magnetic practice. “These people are inseparable with their culture and land and the sensitisation will take time.”