CAIRO: Casualties continued to rise Sunday as rescuers frantically attempted to dig out people crushed in the rubble following a rockslide that flattened over 30 homes in the shantytown of Duweiqa early Saturday.
So far, 37 bodies have been dug up with another 47 injured and an estimated 200 still buried beneath the rubble.
Hopes of finding survivors trapped under giant boulders began to fade on Sunday, a day after a massive rockslide flattened homes in a north Cairo shantytown, burying whole families under the rubble.
There is little hope of finding anyone alive, an officer at the scene said. The heat and dust are unbearable, the people standing here can hardly take it, let alone those trapped inside.
At 9 am Saturday, huge boulders slid off the Moqqatam hill onto 35 homes below in Izbet Bekhit in the greater Manshiyet Nasser area. The section of the hill that slid off was estimated at 60 meters wide and 15 meters high. Some of the boulders weighed as much as 70 tons.
Any chances for a quick rescue were dashed by the makeup of the area, essentially a slum with poorly constructed houses and extremely narrow dirt roads. There was no hope for the army’s heavy bulldozers to enter the narrow ravine. People’s only resort was to lift rocks with their bare hands.
It was five hours before the heavy lifting machinery was able to reach the disaster area.
Matters were further compounded by ambulances’ inability to enter and exit the area quickly to transport any survivors, with traffic brought to an almost complete standstill within the shantytown.
One police officer walking by complained about the sheer amount of people blocking the rescue effort and was met with an angry retort by a resident who said, “People here can’t find anything to eat, are you going to blame us too for living here?
Residents insisted that many of the people still trapped beneath the debris had contacted their relatives via mobile phone asking them to get them out.
Residents are throwing stones at police and shouting at civil defense officials. They are angry because they say rescue efforts are slow and inefficient, a security official said on condition of anonymity.
As the rescue process was underway at its painfully slow pace, groups of women who had lost their families began wailing for the deceased.
Further up the dirt road in a mosque, the prayers for the dead were conducted continuously.
“Those who died here are martyrs of Ramadan, a resident who preferred to remain anonymous told Daily News Egypt, “and it is a lesson for those who are still alive, to heed their actions and correct them.
Minister of social solidarity Ali Moselhi said LE 5,000 would be paid to the family of each person killed and one LE 1,000 to each injured person, the official MENA news agency reported.
The cause of the slide has not been confirmed, but residents believe that it came about from sewage works by the local council for homes at the top of the hill. The smaller pieces that cracked off from the slide were slushy as if mixed with liquid.
One resident in the area, who asked for his name to be withheld, told Daily News Egypt that the council work had been going on that very morning, starting a few hours before the slide.
“The houses on the hill have a sewage system that flows off the mountain, he said, “and the council has been digging in that part of the rock for this reason.
Residents’ anger was palpable, as they blamed officials for the disaster. Many complained that there had been great opposition against building more houses on top of the hill, but they had been built anyway after being granted permission by the council. In a previous Daily News Egypt report on this very area, residents had voiced grave concern over the possibility that the giant eroding slabs of rock hanging over their homes might fall.
“The rock was secure when we first came here. But with the water and wind, it was slowly eroding. We have complained to the local municipality, and the governorate office in Abdeen, but to no avail. An inspector came in his car, but didn’t even bother to get out. He looked out his window, and drove off, resident Suraya Abdel-Qader Ali told Daily News Egypt in July.
Additionally, new houses that were built for the residents as part of First Lady Suzanne Mubarak’s houses for the poor project, remain unoccupied. The Interior Ministry released a statement saying that plans had been underway to relocate the residents in one month.
Opposition groups slammed the incident as yet another example of the government’s endemic corruption and gross apathy towards poverty-stricken Egyptians, who constitute the majority.
After the Shoura Council fire in August, this latest incident calls into question the government’s ability to handle crisis situations.
Shantytowns have been the subject of intense scrutiny recently, yet observers have complained that the thousands of government houses built over the past five years and meant to end the problem remain empty.
After an emergency meeting on Saturday evening, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said there would be a full review of shantytowns throughout the country.
As further warning, experts believe this is just the beginning of such rockslides in this area. Secretary General of the Advisory Engineering Forum Hammad Abdalla Hammad said that “what is coming will be much worse. The crest of the hill will continue to fall on the most densely populated part of Cairo.
“We are threatened as Cairenes either by a mass killing due to fire or the collapse of a mountain, he added. -Additional reporting by AFP
