By Mohamed Ismail Kamara
Executive Director, Stichting EcoProbe Africa, Netherlands
ecoprobeafrica@gmail.com
I have spent years writing about the dangers closing in on Freetown. Sometimes I wondered if my words were reaching anyone. Then yesterday, at 12:23 in the afternoon, the ground trembled.
Offices at Youyi Building began to sway. Workers on Waterloo Street felt their chairs move. People rushed outside, hearts pounding. This city felt fragile in a way no flood or landslide had ever made me feel.
Scientists say the tremors came from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake deep in the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,195 kilometres from Freetown. That distance takes you almost exactly to Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. Now imagine that distance shorter. Imagine the same earthquake off our own coast, near the Sierra Leone Fracture Zone. Then we would not be talking about swaying chairs. We would be counting buildings. We would be counting lives.
That is why yesterday matters. Not because the earthquake was close, but because it showed us how close it could be. The ocean is right there. And we have made our own ground weaker, so that even a distant tremor finds us exposed.
The National Disaster Management Agency mobilised quickly, sending teams to inspect Youyi Building and other structures where people felt the shaking. They found no major damage. They urged calm. They said there was no cause for panic.
But I am not calm. And you should not be either.
Youyi Building houses government offices. People work there every day. If an earthquake nearly 1,200 kilometres away can make it shake, what does that tell us about its structural integrity? What does it tell us about the soil beneath it, and the hillsides around it, stripped bare by deforestation and now holding on to nothing but loose earth?
Experts must be called in. Not a quick inspection or a reassuring press statement, but a thorough, independent assessment. The engineers who designed Youyi Building should be consulted. We need to know whether it is safe for the thousands who pass through its corridors, or whether it should be permanently evacuated. This is not fearmongering. This is common sense.
In August 2017, a mudslide tore through Regent and claimed over a thousand lives. Families were buried in their sleep. Children were swept away by walls of mud. We mourned. We promised it would never happen again.
It happened again.
In August 2026, flash floods displaced hundreds of families. A five year old girl, her mother, and her grandmother were killed when a compound wall collapsed under the rain. More than three hundred homes were flooded.
And these are only the disasters that made headlines. Every rainy season we lose lives. Every dry season the heat grows worse. The winds come erratically now. The city is gasping for air.
Why is this happening? The Western Area Peninsula National Park, the green lung that shields Freetown, has been ravaged. Nearly a third of its forest cover, some 5,600 hectares, has been lost since 2012. In one year alone, another 713 hectares disappeared. The National Disaster Management Agency itself has warned this increases the risk of hillside destabilisation, soil erosion, and landslides.
We are not just losing trees. We are losing our protection. We are losing our water supply. We are losing the very ground beneath our feet.
And still the charcoal burners go into the forest. The illegal loggers take what they want. The land grabbers build their mansions on hillsides that should never have been touched. The politicians make their speeches. The enforcement officers look the other way.
Now the earth itself has sent us a warning.
Some will say I am being dramatic, that the shaking was mild. But I remember the Cotton Tree. That ancient symbol of our freedom, standing for centuries, fallen in a single storm. We called it a tragedy. We should have called it a prophecy.
Freetown sits on hills that are crumbling. It sits beside an ocean that is rising. It sits on land stripped of everything that once held it together.
And who is responsible? Not just the poor charcoal burners trying to make a living. The politicians. The so called influential people. They build on protected land. They clear forest for their compounds. They bribe their way past regulations. And when it comes time to demolish illegal structures, nothing happens. Who will demolish the house of a minister? Who will touch the property of a businessman who funds campaigns? The law bends. The hills crumble. The rest of us pay the price.
Every protected area in this city has been eaten away. The Western Area Peninsula Forest Reserve, the Leicester Peak Forest Reserve, the Waterloo and Guma Valley reserves. Gone, or nearly gone. The maps still show them as protected. Walk through what should be forest and you find concrete walls, iron gates, and generators humming. The forest is a memory.
Governments come and go. Each one promises to protect the environment. Each one plants a tree for the cameras. Then they leave, and nothing changes. The lip service continues. The destruction continues.
Some may ask if planting trees can really save Freetown. Yes, but not alone. A forest is protection. Roots hold the hills together. The canopy breaks the rain. The forest floor soaks the water. That means less flooding, fewer shallow landslides, cleaner water, cooler air. It cannot stop an earthquake in the ocean. No tree can. But it can make our city less fragile when the ground shakes.
We need to reforest this city. Not a few trees in a park for a photo opportunity, but a real campaign. Native trees. Fruit trees. Trees that hold the soil, bring back the birds, cool the air. We need to replant the hillsides, the reserves, the school compounds, the mosque and church yards, the roadsides.
Some will ask if Sierra Leone sits on broken tectonic plates. We do not sit on a major plate boundary. Our land rests on the West African Craton, one of the oldest and most stable blocks of crust on earth. But stable does not mean safe. Deep in the Atlantic, the Mid Atlantic Ridge is slowly pulling apart, and that stress travels along ancient fracture zones that reach our coast. Yesterday’s earthquake came from that ocean, more than a thousand kilometres away, and still it shook Youyi Building.
That is why we should worry. We cannot control the ocean floor, but we can control what we do on our hills. We have cut the forests, built on protected land, ignored the law, and weakened the ground beneath our own feet. We are not simply waiting for nature to strike. We are bringing this on ourselves.
We need a full structural audit of every large building in the city. We need to know which are safe and which are not. We need to relocate people from hillsides at risk. We need to stop the deforestation now, with real enforcement, not words. We need to hold those destroying our environment accountable, regardless of their political connections or their wealth.
Most of all, we need to stop pretending this is someone else’s problem. It is yours and mine. It is the problem of every person who breathes Freetown’s air, drinks its water, and walks on its soil.
But let me speak directly to the good and helpless people of Sierra Leone, to the residents of Freetown who have no power and no voice in all of this. Be vigilant. Watch the ground beneath your feet. If you see cracks opening in the earth, if you feel the ground move when it should be still, do not wait. If you see sea water coming into your settlement, do not wait for an official announcement. Flee. Move to higher ground. Your life is worth more than anything you own.
You know your community better than any official. You know when something is wrong. Trust that instinct. Warn your neighbours. Help each other. The government may fail you. The system may fail you. But we cannot fail each other.
I am not a pessimist. I am a born Sierra Leonean, a citizen of this historic city I love deeply. And I am afraid.
The floods will come again. The rains will fall harder. The hills will keep crumbling. The question is not whether Freetown will face another disaster. The question is whether we will do anything before it is too late.
Yesterday, the earth shook. Next time, it might not be so gentle. We have been warned. Let us not wait for the next warning to be written in mud and tears.