A mountain of refuse in Guinea’s capital gave way on Sunday, August 23, 2026, killing at least 34 people as it swallowed the shacks clustered at its base and pinned residents under tons of garbage.
The site that failed was Dar Es Salam, the largest waste site in Conakry, the seaside capital of the West African nation. Informal housing had grown right up against the edges of the dump as it swelled year by year — an arrangement common to cities where scavengers make a living by sorting through material that has been discarded.
A three-story building at the foot of the mound caved in under the weight of the sliding waste, which also flattened several homes, and rescue crews began combing the debris for anyone still alive. A government statement reported on August 24 counted 22 injured — six seriously and 16 lightly.
Cire Diallo, a woman at the site, told reporters that her five children were killed. “I have lost all my children. All I can do is put my trust in God,” she said.
The slope let go at about 3 a.m. An overnight downpour had soaked the refuse, authorities said, leaving the landfill dangerously unstable.
Robert Kamano Sâa, an eyewitness, described a second collapse that came down in stages on the people trying to help. “The first section gave way. People tried to come to the rescue, shouting, ‘Is there anyone down there?’… That was when the second section collapsed in three successive stages, cascading down. And that is what poured onto the people.”
Photographers captured staff with ANGUCH, the government body charged with handling emergencies and humanitarian disasters, on the shifting slope of garbage where crews were working. Residents whose homes stood nearby were seen carrying away what they could in the hours that followed the slide.
Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the site on August 23 as excavators worked through the collapsed landfill. Measures had been taken “to ensure medical care for the wounded” and “assistance for those affected by this tragedy,” the government said.
A Dump That Was Already Marked for Closure
Sharpening the anguish is a simple fact: the landfill should never have been in use when it came down. Lt. Col. Baldé Mamadou Bailo, who oversees sanitation for the army’s engineering battalion, said the landfill had originally been scheduled to close on Sunday, August 23, after officials warned about hazardous conditions there.
Behind that order was an earlier incident at the dump in recent years that had raised safety concerns. Officials had also served eviction notices, as a precaution, on residents living beside the landfill, requiring them to leave.
Plenty of people were still in the immediate vicinity, though, when the waste came down. The dump has long been both a hazard and a livelihood for families with nowhere else to go, and the eviction orders did not empty the neighborhood.
Speaking at the scene, Dienabou Touré, Guinea’s minister of territorial administration and decentralization, said: “We will ensure that the remaining families are relocated elsewhere.”
On August 25, the government announced a package of emergency measures: the complete demolition of the Dar Es Salam landfill, mixed teams deployed to identify and register at-risk homes beside it, a medical response from the health ministry, and the search for new sites to rehouse those displaced.
Echoes of a Mudslide in 2017
Deaths at this landfill are not new. Torrential rains in 2017 set off a mudslide there that left nine people dead, and the episode fed years of warnings about the stability of the ever-growing pile.
Heavy rain turns waste sites like Dar Es Salam into a well-documented danger. Water works its way into layers of trash that are only loosely packed, and the material grows heavier and more slippery until the slope gives way — usually with enormous force and almost no warning. Conakry’s rainy season brings sustained downpours, which makes that risk seasonal and recurring.
The government’s count of 30 still stood on Monday, August 24, when Guinea’s Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization said several people remained unaccounted for and that the death toll was expected to rise as search operations continued. It did: on Tuesday, August 25, Health Minister Khaité Sall put the toll at 34 dead and 33 injured, six of them seriously, and said several Sierra Leoneans were among the victims. About 1,500 families were to be rehoused. Military personnel and heavy machinery were deployed to assist rescue teams amid continuing heavy rain.
Practical, urgent questions now face the surrounding community. Where will displaced families sleep? How will the destroyed homes be replaced? And will the closure that was supposed to take effect on Sunday, August 23, now be enforced — for families who had been living, until that morning, in the shadow of the city’s biggest dump?
