New rains on Saturday morning in South Africa darkened the sky and the hopes of advancing relief after tragic floods which left nearly 400 dead and tens of thousands of victims.
Rescue operations are still underway, rescue workers told AFP. “We’re going to focus on medical emergencies,” said Garrith Jamieson, who leads teams.
Most of the victims of the bad weather which started last weekend on the east coast were recorded in the region of Durban, a port city in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) open to the Indian Ocean.
Dozens of people are still missing. The army with helicopters and more than 4,000 policemen were deployed. But on the 6th day of the disaster, the hope of finding survivors is slim.
“It has been raining since this morning in some parts of the region. And even if it will not be as violent as in the past few days, as the ground is already saturated with water, there is still a risk of a lot of flooding,” said explained to AFP the forecaster Puseletso Mofokeng, of the national institute of meteorology.
Heavy rains washed away entire sections of roads, many infrastructures collapsed. The public transport operator is urgently trying to restore the main lines of communication. Priority is given to the reconstruction of the bridges which have collapsed, completely isolating certain parts of the agglomeration of more than 3.5 million inhabitants.
– “Rotten” –
Some 4,000 houses were razed, more than 13,500 damaged, putting thousands of people on the streets. Emergency accommodation has been opened but space is lacking. Some have been sleeping for several days on chairs or pieces of cardboard placed on the floor.
In some areas, water and electricity have been cut since Monday. Desperate people draw water from the burst pipes. Others say that what little food they had left is now rotten.
President Cyril Ramaphosa lamented a disaster “never seen before in the country”. A state of disaster has been declared.
NGOs are mobilized and food distributions continue. The queues lengthen in the back of trucks to collect a bag of rice, pasta, but also bottles of water and mattresses.
Looting has been reported. The region had already experienced massive destruction in July during an unprecedented wave of riots and looting.
The day before, volunteers armed with gloves and rubbish bags began cleaning Durban’s beaches, which are usually popular with families and tourists.
Rains also fell in the neighboring province of Eastern Cape (southeast). Flooding has already been reported in the area of the coastal city of Port St Johns.
Four people died, according to the local NGO Gift of the Givers, present on the spot. “The body of a six-year-old boy was found yesterday,” provincial coordinator Corene Conradie told AFP. “Many houses have been destroyed, at least a hundred families are currently homeless.”
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.