More rain lashes South Africa’s flood ravaged east

South Africa’s flood-ravaged east received additional rain on Saturday, following the country’s deadliest storm in living memory, which killed almost 400 people and displaced tens of thousands.

Parts of Durban’s eastern coastal city were swamped by floodwaters last week, ripping up highways, wrecking hospitals, and carrying away homes and those trapped within.

As weather experts projected additional rain over the weekend, emergency services in the southern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, where Durban is located, were on high alert.

“The death toll has increased and currently stands at 398, with 27 people still missing,” said a government, announcing that 58 hospitals and clinics had been “severely affected”.

Recovery operations and humanitarian relief were underway in the city of 3.5 million which would normally have been teeming with Easter holidaymakers this weekend.

“It’s already raining in some parts of KZN but it won’t be as hectic as it was in the past few days,” Puseletso Mofokeng, senior forecaster at the South Africa Weather Service, told AFP.

“But because of the soil being over-saturated with water, we can still get a lot of flooding,” he warned.

Between 25 mm and 45 mm of rain was expected Saturday, compared to the more than 300 mm which fell within a 24-hour period in some regions day on Monday.

Disaster management teams said they were on “high alert to swiftly respond to communities known to be at high risk, to avert or minimize the disaster impact”.

Troops, police, and volunteer rescue workers are operating from a small civilian airport.

Shawn Herbst of the first responder company Netcare 911 told AFP: “Sadly there are still bodies being recovered from homesteads, especially from the rural areas.”

“There is still damage taking place, especially with the rain we are experiencing today.”

– ‘Another disaster’ –
The floods have damaged more than 13,500 houses and completely destroyed around 4,000.

Authorities have urged people in high-risk areas to move to community facilities such as halls and schools.

Clean water is scarce and authorities have promised to deploy water tankers.

The government has announced one billion rands ($68 million) in emergency relief funding.

The country’s billionaire and Confederation of African Football (CAF) chief Patrice Motsepe donated what he called a “humble contribution” of 30 million rands ($2.0-million; 1.9 million euros).

“Our people are suffering. We really want the 30 million to be spent as matter of urgency,” said Motsepe announcing the donation before the Zulu King, Misuzulu Zulu, at a hall sheltering displaced people.

Six days after the floods first struck, hope of finding survivors is fading and Durban Emergency Medical Services spokesman Robert McKenzie said the response was now focussing on recovery and humanitarian relief.

“There has been a shift in response to the emergency as we have moved from the emergency phase to the recovery phase of the disaster, more to the humanitarian relief effort and restoration of services,” he told AFP.

Survivors are still desperately looking for missing relatives.

“We are getting calls constantly on a daily basis. Yesterday there were 35 calls attended to, and there were six bodies recovered,” said Travis Trower, director for the volunteer-run organization Rescue South Africa.

South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized country, is still struggling to recover from the two-year-old Covid pandemic and deadly riots last year that killed more than 350 people, mostly in the now flood-struck southeastern region.

“Just as we thought it was safe to get out of (the Covid) disaster, we have another disaster, a natural disaster descending on our country,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a Good Friday speech.

The floods are “a catastrophe of enormous proportions… not seen before in our country”.