South Africa, hit by dramatic floods that killed nearly 400 people and destroyed thousands of homes on the east coast, was hit by new rains on Saturday, putting relief workers on alert to the specter of other disasters.
A new report from the authorities reported 398 dead and 27 missing. Most of the victims were recorded in the Durban region, a port city in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) open to the Indian Ocean, where heavy rains have been falling since last weekend.
“The damage continues with the rain today making it worse in the affected areas,” Shawn Herbst, Netcare 911 first responder, told AFP. The army, special police teams and helicopters were deployed. Rescuers from other provinces came to lend a hand.
According to the National Institute of Meteorology, the rains are less dense but the risk of new floods and landslides is significant on ground already waterlogged.
“We get calls all the time, every day,” says Travis Trower, director of the volunteer rescue organization Rescue South Africa.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has canceled a trip to Saudi Arabia next week as the unprecedented disaster requires “everyone to be on deck”, he said in a statement.
– A bad dream –
The search for the missing continues. In Marianhill, a suburb of Durban, Dumisani Kanyile, who lost ten members of his family, was relieved to see the men and dogs arriving. “But given the rain that is coming back, they will stop the search,” he fears.
“So many people died, including babies,” said Mesuli Shandu, 20, a relative. She still believes in a bad dream.
On the 6th day of the disaster, the hope of finding survivors is slim and the aid is now focused on “humanitarian and re-commissioning”, explains Robert McKenzie, who is part of the emergency teams.
Some 4,000 houses were razed, more than 13,500 damaged, putting thousands of people on the streets. Emergency shelters have been opened.
Strongly in demand, particularly in emergencies, around sixty health establishments in the region were “seriously affected by the floods”, according to a press release from the provincial government.
Roads and bridges cut as well as water and electricity cuts also prevent hospitals from functioning normally. Caregivers preferred to sleep on site to avoid the transport problem.
In some areas, water and electricity have been cut since Monday. Desperate residents were seen carrying buckets of water on carts by the side of the road. Others said that what little food they had left had now rotted away.
The authorities, who called for donations, promised to deploy more tankers in the agglomeration of 3.5 million inhabitants to distribute drinking water.
Emergency government aid of 63 million euros (one billion rand) has been announced. South African billionaire and Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Patrice Motsepe has donated a “modest contribution” of 1.9 million euros (R30 million).
The authorities expect hundreds of millions of euros in damages. The region had already experienced massive destruction in July during an unprecedented wave of riots and looting.
Rains also fell in the neighboring province of Eastern Cape (southeast). “The body of a six-year-old boy was found yesterday,” Corene Conradie, coordinator of local NGO Gift of the Givers, told AFP.
South Africa is generally spared the storms that affect neighboring countries such as Madagascar or Mozambique each year during the hurricane season which runs from November to April.
