SUSANS BAY FREETOWN SOCIETY REPORT
On Wednesday the 24th March at Susan’s Bay Freetown at around 1800hrs the fire spread rapidly, because of the location close to the sea, there are no access roads so the fire service were not able to react quickly.
There had been 4 fires in the last 5 years in Susan’s Bay, previously the Government with Freetown City Council had provided homes for residents affected in 2017 at 6 mile, past Waterloo and outside of Freetown, this was not a good solution because there was nothing there for them and they were left out on a limb.
We had a meeting with Hull Society members and some Freetown City Council workers to go and visit, we visited on Friday the 26th March and met with the Ward Councillor, we interviewed her to ask about statistics of households and personnel affected, also to find out who was heading the response and the International NGO support and local support.
The Office of National Security are heading the disaster management response, the estimated households affected is up to 1500, the personnel affected is up to 7500 people, this will have been hard to gauge because of all people not having national ID cards. All residents are still in the area, to put a camp in close proximity would not be possible. The Susan’s Bay location is near to PZ area which is a heavily populated and congested area in the Centre and towards the East.
The International response had come from Caritas who have a permanent presence on the Ground, Turkey Red Cross have provided tents for up to 1000 people to be accommodated in. The other International NGO was a German Medical organisation that had provided 2 tents as Medical stations.
There is a response control area in a compound within the Community that is being used as a distribution centre. Although a bit chaotic, in these situations it is expected. The food provided had come from some International organisations, also from the President 1600 Bags of Rice and 1600 Containers of Oil.
The Councillor estimated that this would be 15 days of food that had been provided, they had set up specific cooking and feeding stations in the Community, I noticed lots of Petty food traders in the area, I know from my Experience during the Ebola crisis there will be opportunists who will seek to benefit from this disaster and from my Experiences in the Army on Operational tours.
