[2] In 1869 William Winwood Reade visited, leaving the following description of the town and its defensive stockage of hundreds of massive silk cotton trees: On arriving at the top of a small hill the people stood still, and pointing with their hands, pronounced the word Falaba!

After Samori's general N'fa Ali destroyed a number of surrounding villages, the Mandingo forces began a five-month siege of Falaba itself.

With the city's residents starved nearly to death, Manga Sewa could not bear the starvation of his people and for the mere fact that he was being compromised by their neighbouring villages he vowed never to surrender himself to Samouri's army, so he decided to go into the gunpowder house to commit suicide by lighting it up, his wife said she would not sleep with any other man beside her husband (Manga Sewa), his Yaeliba (a person who sing and praises Kings and great people) also decided to join him in the gunpowder thus saying he would not praise any other King, so they both entered the Falaba gunpowder magazine and lit a torch, simultaneously killing himself and breaching Falaba's walls.

[citation needed] Reports indicate that fighting in Falaba during the Sierra Leone Civil War of the 1990s caused most people to flee the town.

[citation needed] In a press report of May 27, 1998, one witness said "the towns of Falaba, Sinkunia, Musaia-Mongo Bendugu, Krubonia, Bafodia and Yiffin had all been partly or totally destroyed".