Irish aid workers rebuild 426 homes in two weeks after inferno destroys city slum

Britain’s Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, visited the slum earlier in the year and spoke of her devastation for its residents after the fire

A MAJOR rebuild of 426 homes in just two weeks was carried out by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide after a massive fire destroyed a large part of a city slum in one of the poorest countries in the world.

Hundreds of residents in the Kroo Bay coastal community in Freetown, Sierra Leone on Africa’s west coast, took part in the emergency housing response led by Concern, which saved 1,385 people, including 601 children, from having to sleep rough.

Concern’s Eoin O’Donnell, from Dublin, who managed the project, said almost everyone moved into their new homes within two weeks, when the main body of the structures, the walls and roofing, were finished.

He said Concern staff then spent about nine more weeks giving follow-up support to the community and helping residents make finishing touches to each property, like completion of works to doors and windows.

“Almost everyone moved back in directly from when the structures went back up, which was in one to two weeks,” said Eoin, who is Concern’s Programme Manager for Sierra Leone.

“We had to respond and quickly before the monsoon rains came. There were families sleeping on the burnt ruins of their homes.

“Heavy rains were due and this was an area that was extremely difficulty for any vehicle to access – so the task was very challenging.

“We put a plan together with the local government and community and moved over 470,000kg, or 81 truckloads, of building materials, much of it carried to the site by hand, over a two week period starting on St. Patrick’s Day.”

The total rebuild cost came to €190,264, or an average of €446 per home, which was donated by The Start Fund, a humanitarian emergency response funding pool supported by Ireland and other European governments.

Eoin said building materials used included zinc sheets for walls and roofing, bush sticks for structural support, timber, nails and cement.

Victims of this sudden homeless crisis in Kroo Bay registered their details with Concern who then provided them with the “shelter kits” they needed to rebuild. They were trained and helped by the aid agency’s staff and members of the community throughout the construction project.

The rebuild was in response to an inferno that swept through the Kroo Bay community on March 4, destroying hundreds of homes.

Incredibly, there were no reported deaths from the blaze with just three people sustaining minor injuries. Officials investigating the fire believe it was caused by a mosquito coil, which is a curled aromatic incense stick that is lit to release insect repelling smoke.

The fire made headlines in the UK on March 10 when Britain’s Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, spoke of her devastation for the over 1,000 people affected just weeks after she had visited the impoverished area where she said many make a living looking for valuables in a vast rubbish dump.

Veronica Williams, a single mother-of-four who “lost everything” in the fire, said she was “overexcited at the complete support given to our community.”

Concern also responded to a separate non-fatal fire on March 8 that swept through the Susan’s Bay slum in Freetown, affecting 120 homes.

The Irish charity provided shelter equipment to help the Catholic Relief Services and Caritas aid agencies with their response to the aftermath of that blaze.

Sierra Leone, which won independence from Britain in 1961, has been attempting to rebuild since the end of a brutal 11-year civil war in 2002. It was also devastated by a major Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016 that infected and killed thousands of people – and it remains vulnerable to natural disasters like the mudslides that killed over one thousand people in 2017.

The country is generally peaceful today and is trying to develop its economy, but remains extremely poor and was one of the worst scoring countries in the 2018 Global Hunger Index and one of six highlighted as having “alarming” hunger levels.