About 259 were said to have died after a heavy downpour which led to a flood swept through the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, in South Africa late Tuesday.
This has rendered many residents in the area displaced, sweeping away roads and disrupting shipping activities.
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The flood according to South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was referred to as “catastrophe of enormous proportions”.
Ramaphosa spoke while visiting families who had lost loved ones in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal province, including a family with four children after floods and mudslides ravaged homes.
“You’re not alone… We’ll do everything in our powers to see how we can help,” Ramaphos said, assuring that, “even though your hearts are in pain, we’re here for you.”
“You’re battling one of the biggest incidents we’ve seen and we thought this only happens in other countries like Mozambique or Zimbabwe,” Ramaphosa said.
The Provincial Health Chief, Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu, said Wednesday after hillsides washed away, homes collapsed, and more people were still feared missing, in what was regarded as the country’s deadliest floods in over six decades.
“The biggest worry is the number of bodies we are finding,” she said, stressing that the morgues ”are under a bit of pressure, however, we are coping.”
The United Methodist Church in the township of Clermont was reduced to a pile of rubble. Four children from a local family died when a wall collapsed on them.
Other homes hung precariously to the hillside, miraculously still intact after much of the ground underneath them washed away in mudslides.
The storm forced sub-Saharan Africa’s most important port to halt operations, as the main access road suffered heavy damage.
Shipping containers were tossed about, washed into mountains of metal.
Sections of other roads were washed away, leaving behind gashes in the earth bigger than large trucks.
South Africa’s neighbours suffer such natural disasters from tropical storms almost every year, but Africa’s most industrialised country is largely shielded from the storms that form over the Indian Ocean.
These rains were not tropical, but rather caused by a weather system called a cut-off low that had brought rain and cold weather to much of the country.
When storms reached the warmer and more humid climate in Durban’s KwaZulu-Natal province, even more rain poured down.
“Some parts on KZN (province) have received more than 450 millimetres (18 inches) in the last 48 hours,” said Tawana Dipuo, a forecaster at the national weather service – nearly half of Durban’s annual rainfall of 1,009 mm.
The rain continued in parts of the city on Wednesday afternoon, and a flood warning was issued for the neighbouring province of Eastern Cape.
The storm struck as Durban had barely recovered from deadly riots last July which claimed more than 350 lives, in South Africa’s worst unrest since the end of apartheid.
Schools not affected by the floods re-opened Wednesday but few students turned up. A teacher at a primary in Durban’s Inanda suburb said only two of 48 pupils reported for classes.
The provincial government said the disaster “wreaked untold havoc and unleashed massive damage to lives and infrastructure”.
The national police force deployed 300 extra officers to the region, as the Air Force sent planes to help with the rescue operations.
Torrents tore several bridges apart and submerged cars and collapsed houses. A fuel tanker floated at sea after being swept off the road.
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