The 9 August 2024 garbage dump landslide at Kiteezi, Uganda

The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

On 9 August 2024, a significant landslide struck the Kiteezi garbage dump in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. At the time of writing, the reported loss of life has reached 21 people, whilst the rescue operation is ongoing.

The Kiteezi landfill site is located at [0.4108, 32.5762], as shown in the Google Earth image below:-

As the image above shows, the sale of the garbage dump is large, and there are many houses in close proximity. Images from the site (Al Jazeera has a good gallery) suggest that the waste pile failed and inundated houses surrounding the site.

Kampala has been struck by heavy rainfall in recent days, but poor practice in waste management is often a factor in garbage dump failures. The Head of Public and Corporate Affairs of the Kampala Capital City Authority, Daniel NuweAbiine, has been arrested for “obstructing investigations into the garbage slide”.

There have been long running concerns about the Kiteezi landfill , and indeed there is a 2021 paper (Aryampa et al. 2021) in the Journal of African Earth Sciences that examines its environmental impact. It concludes that:

“…it is not environmentally friendly to continue operating the landfill. Hence, the most sustainable course of action is its closure.”

This is the latest in a long run of garbage landslides that I have featured on this blog over the years, including the 2023 failure at Naucalpan in Mexico, the 2017 landslide at Meethotamulla in Sri Lanka, the 2017 landslide at Koshe in Ethiopia and the 2008 failure at Guatamala City.

Back in 2008 I wrote about the horrific nature of garbage dump landslides; it is a tragedy that they are continuing to occur.

Reference

Aryampa, S. et al. 2021. Adaptation of EVIAVE methodology to landfill environmental impact assessment in Uganda – A case study of Kiteezi landfill.
Journal of African Earth Sciences, 183, 104310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2021.104310.

Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

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