In the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, severe floods and landslides brought on by torrential rains have resulted in over 55 fatalities and hundreds of injuries as of Tuesday, December 13.
The 24 neighbourhoods in Kinshasa were impacted, according to local authorities.
The population of the Congolese city is about 12 million. Many of whom are currently mourning loved ones.
“Around 4:15 a.m. we woke up, the water had gotten into the house”, Robert the relative of a deceased recounted.
“We tried to channel the water elsewhere after we noticed that there was more danger. We went back to the house to sleep since we were soaked with the cold, we went back to bed, and just after, the wall collapsed on the children and the parents and on a neighbor, who was passing by. In total, nine people died.”
Along with flooding homes, the torrential rains also destroyed many highways. A crucial supply route connecting the city to the port of Matadi on the Atlantic Ocean was blocked off by a landslide in the southern Mont-Ngafula district.
Officials, according to Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, are still looking for other bodies.
“We came to assess the damage and the primary damage we see is human,” Lukonde said on state television Tuesday.
President Félix Tshisekedi, who is in Washington for the USA-Africa Summit, offered his sincere condolences to the surviving family members.
He requested in a tweet that “the national and provincial administrations step up” to help the most in need and “to speed up the construction of rainwater drainage to prevent this type of calamity from happening again.”
According to the mayor of the neighbourhood, Alid’or Tshibanda, more than thirty individuals died in the Ngaliema region, and the number of bodies is still being tabulated. Five members of one family were killed, some by electrocution, in another area of the city.
“It is a just calamity,” said Pierrot Mantuela. The 30-year-old lost his mother, nine-year-old daughter and three brothers. “It’s sad to lose all the members of my family,” he said. He said he was spared because he was working Monday night when the rains began.
Officials said much of the destruction happened in houses built on plots without official permission. “They have no documents. They are chased away but they always come back,” said Dieumerci Mayibazilwanga, the mayor of Mont-Ngafula, of people building unauthorized houses.
At least 32 people died in and around Kinshasa in 2019 due to flooding and landslides.
