As the Mayor of Freetown, Her Worship Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr visited victims of Kroo Bay fire incident that occurred in the evening of Monday 20th September, 2021.

Her Worship was accompanied by the Councillor of Kroo Bay Community, Murray Allie Conteh of Ward 431 and was welcomed by the stakeholders of the community.

“Today I visited the victims of the recent Kroo Bay fire which occurred on 20th September, destroying 137 households and displacing almost 500 people.  Sadly, this is the latest of over 20 significant disasters to have afflicted Freetown in 2021; the majority of which are linked to poor urban planning, overpopulation, antiquated electrical distribution systems, and climate and hydro-meteorological hazards.

Due to its scale, response to the fire disaster at Kroobay is led by the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) as a Level 2 response. FCC’s Environmental Management committee, supported by the FCC Disaster Management Team, have been fully involved in supporting the coordination of the response, resulting in a major supply of food, non-food and WASH items to those most at need.

Today I witnessed first-hand both the gratitude of the recipients, but also the significant challenges faced by Freetown’s informal settlements every day.

I am pleased that with the support of a consortium of NGOs, FCC has made considerable progress in the development of a neighborhood upgrading framework for the Cockle Bay and Kolleh Town informal settlements. The successful implementation of these schemes within the next year will be a template that can be scaled up for bigger settlements like Kroo Bay.”