On Thursday, the death toll from South Africa’s “historic” floods reached 341 as helicopters spread out across the southeastern city of Durban in a desperate search for survivors.
Rescuers raced to bring supplies across the city this week as rain washed away roads and bridges. Some inhabitants have been without electricity or water since Monday.
Rescuers were flown in and out of a small airfield north of Durban. Air support was provided by a fleet of volunteers, corporate companies, and schools, in addition to the military and police.
However, Travis Trower, a director for the volunteer-run organisation Rescue South Africa, reported that one day after the rains stopped, fewer survivors were discovered. He said his crews had only recovered remains after receiving 85 calls on Thursday.
“It’s awful,” he continued, “but we try our best for as many people as we can.”
The administration has not stated how many people have gone missing. According to Zikalala, the damage bill will be in the billions of rands.
To unlock rescue funds, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the region a catastrophe. Authorities said they’ve set up 17 shelters to house more than 2,100 people who have been displaced.
In certain locations, sporadic protests against the sluggish restoration of services and a lack of assistance arose. The city authority of Durban pleaded for patience.
“We understand our residents’ dissatisfaction and fear,” it said in a statement. “We’re putting in as much effort as we can.” Our teams are working tirelessly to restore services. However, due to the amount of the damage to access routes, it may take some time to fully restore all services.”
The government of KwaZulu-Natal has also issued a public appeal for assistance, asking for non-perishable food, bottled water, clothing, and blankets.
Many survivors, however, said that they were left to fend for themselves.
Residents in Amaoti, a township north of Durban, precariously balanced on the embankment of a collapsed road, attempting to gather clean water from a broken pipe beneath.
“We don’t have running water or electricity… “People are coming from all around to collect water,” Thabani Mgoni, 38, said.
On Tuesday, Philisiwe Mfeka, a 78-year-old grandmother, said her water supply was cut off.
Even the water from the broken pipe was rationed to one bucket per family, with children as young as ten coming to collect it.
Families cleaned whatever clothes they could find in dirty water beside a riverbank, amidst severed pipes poking out of the ground.
According to weather experts, some places in Durban received more than 45cm (18 inches) of rain in 48 hours, about half of the city’s average rainfall of 101cm (40 inches).
The South African Weather Service has issued an Easter weekend warning for thunderstorms and localised flooding in KwaZulu-Natal, as well as the neighbouring provinces of the Free State and the Eastern Cape.
The country is still recovering from a two-year COVID pandemic and brutal rioting that killed more than 350 people last year.
The southeastern coast of Africa is at the disposal of sea-borne weather systems that experts say are becoming worsened as a result of global warming. They believe the situation will deteriorate rapidly over the coming decades.
The accident, according to Ramaphosa, was “a calamity of tremendous dimensions,” and it was “clearly part of climate change.”
“We can no longer put off doing what we need to do, taking the steps we need to take to address climate change.” Without going into detail, Ramaphosa told a crowd in Durban’s Ntuzuma township that “our crisis management capabilities needs to be at a better level.”
“This is a learning moment,” said Christopher Trisos, a key author of a report on climate change adaptation and hazards released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in late February.
“According to the IPCC report, 90% of African towns lack meaningful climate adaptation plans, which is quite alarming. “However, there are still opportunities to adjust,” added Trisos.
Informal communities, according to Trisos, provide good chances for flood adaptation.
“There is an opportunity because many informal settlements have not yet been covered in tarmac, so we can still build green infrastructure,” he said, ranging from water-absorbing urban parks to better-draining rivers.
