Forty-eight hours after the visit of the President of the Republic, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, the situation has returned to normal in Thiaroye-sur-mer. Residents facing flooding after last weekend's downpours are breathing a sigh of relief. The flooded neighborhood is coming back to life thanks to the prompt response of the Senegalese National Sanitation Office (ONAS), which deployed major resources to evacuate all the stagnant water.

The cemetery, completely submerged during the President of the Republic's visit, presents a different appearance. The teams mobilized throughout the weekend pumped out the water. "The cemetery is completely dry," rejoices Issa Diop, the district chief of Santiaba (Thiaroye), who welcomes the emergency measures taken by the Head of State and the diligence with which ONAS acted to relieve the population.

Coming to follow up after the action of the teams deployed on the ground, the Director of Operations and Maintenance of ONAS, Blaise Faye, emphasized that 15,000 cubic meters of water were evacuated from the cemetery. "The State had installed facilities with a capacity of 300 cubic meters per hour, we brought other equipment with a capacity of 500 and 300 cubic meters per hour, which makes a total of 1,100 cubic meters per hour. This is what allowed us to evacuate 7,000 cubic meters of water in 7 hours," he explains.

ONAS also announced proactive measures to prevent a repeat of the situation. Indeed, Blaise Faye emphasizes, the equipment installed in Thiaroye-sur-Mer will be reinforced to further improve the pumping system. Better still, he assures, "on the instructions of the Director General of ONAS, studies will be initiated here in Thiaroye-sur-Mer to assess the conditions under which this shallow water, which is 300 meters away, can be connected to the sea."