What’s behind South Africa’s flood disaster

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized united states of America, has largely escaped the tropical cyclones that regularly hit its neighbors.

But an ultimate week, storms pummelled the east coast town of Durban, triggering heavy floods and landslides that killed extra than 440.

Here are the principal questions behind the floods and devastation.

Meteorologists say the storms were now not tropical.

Instead, the rains had been a part of an ordinary South African weather gadget called a “cut-off low” that could convey heavy rain and cold climate.

“Cut-off low-stress structures are not unusual. Their frequency will become excessive at some stage in autumn and spring seasons, and they’re differing in strength,” stated Puseletso Mofokeng with the South African Weather Service.

Some of those systems are very intense, inflicting heavy rain, hail, sturdy and probably adverse winds, and heavy snowstorms.

A cut-off low in April 2019 killed 85 people in Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.

If the storm system itself is a known phenomenon, the difference this time was the intensity of the deluge.

Here, experts point the finger at climate change — warmer seas charge the atmosphere with more moisture, which then gets dumped as rainfall.

“We’ve seen in Durban three (severe) floods in less than 10 years. Does it have to do with climate change? Definitely,” said Mary Galvin of the University of Johannesburg.

“We are feeling the impact of what will certainly be unpredictable, more frequent, severe, and extreme weather events.”

A recent UN report says what was once considered a one-in-a-hundred-year flood event could end up happening several times a year by 2050.

Durban experiences flood every year, but not as severe as these.

The city is built on a hilly area with many gorges and ravines — a topography that University of KwaZulu-Natal urban planner Hope Magidimisha-Chipungu says is conducive to floods.

If the soil is not properly “stabilized in the hilly areas, it’s obvious you were going to have landslides,” she said.

Some have suggested Durban’s storm-water drainage system may not have been well maintained, which authorities of the 187-year-old city dispute.

Durban city is not alone in experiencing extreme weather conditions in South Africa.

Along the west coast, Cape Town almost ran out of water in a 2018 drought.

“Climate predictions and all models show wet areas will get wetter and dry areas will get dryer. So Durban… unfortunately will be wetter,” said Galvin.

Durban is one of South Africa’s fastest-growing cities, with economic growth outpacing the national average by 2015.

Massive, unplanned migration created housing shortages, which resulted in the mushrooming of shack dwellings, locally called informal settlements.

“The ways in which South African cities were designed were very exclusionary in nature,” said planner Magidimisha-Chipungu.

“The spatial planning and the apartheid legacy (placed) the urban poor in the periphery and in the low-lying areas” along riverbanks, she said.

Around a quarter of the metro’s 3.9 million humans live in 550 informal settlements across the metropolis. At least 164 of them have been built on floodplains, according to Galvin.

A host of new crises have in addition sapped sources — the coronavirus pandemic, large unemployment, and riots and looting that erupted final 12 months.

It’s “like the seven plagues” happening in succession, said Galvin.