Several roads in the Durban area have been flooded after heavy downpours in the city and coastal areas on Saturday night. Reports have also been received of houses being flooded in areas in the northern part of the city, and on the north coast, as far as Ballito.
Rescue and emergency services say in other areas, residents needed to be evacuated from flooded homes in Verulam and surrounding areas.
The heavy rains left a trail of destruction damaging roads and bridges. Two people died and four are missing.
The Thongathi area — where two people are missing — is one of the hardest hit by the storms in the Durban north coast region. Some people lost everything from their clothes, food, and important documents.
The area is also without water — which makes it difficult for residents to clean their flooded homes. They are just sitting hopelessly gazing at what is left of their muddy homes.
Khethelo Mthethwa, who lives in the same house with the two people who are missing, says emergency services told them that they’ll only resume their search, once the water subsides.
“I think I came around 9:30 and there were already people standing outside. They tried telling him to go out of the house he didn’t respond that was the last I heard of him, I think he tried to use the window to escape that’s how he got washed away. The police came and then left. The rescue team also came but found nothing, they said they would come back when the water levels are down because they were still too high. We are left with nothing as you can see the TV and the documents.”
In Zwelisha, outside Verulam, north of Durban, two people were killed when their home collapsed on them.
Ncamsile Zungu and her grandson, Selu, were sleeping when their shack wall fell on them. Bonga Zungu — the son of the deceased — says currently, they have not received any assistance.
“The deceased are my mom and my brother’s son. Neighbours say when it started raining the wall collapsed on them and they were trapped inside. This is the second time this is happening the first time it collapsed and they rebuilt, now this time it collapses and there are lives lost.”
Emergency Services had their hands full the entire night. Devan Perumal is the Operations manager at Reaction Unit South Africa describing how they recovered the bodies.
“We received multiple calls from the community members reporting that one of the wooden iron houses had collapsed. Upon arrival with SAPS and together with the community we managed to remove the rubble from the collapsed house. We identified a granny and the child lying in the bed. It appears as if they were asleep when this happened.”
Meanwhile, KwaZulu-Natal Police have opened an inquest docket following the discovery of three bodies, which they believe could be of the missing Bergville family members. Pictures of the missing have been circulated on social media since their disappearance on New Year’s Day. The gruesome discovery was stumbled upon by construction workers on the N11, who notified the police.
Provincial police spokesperson, Robert Netshiunda, says the vehicle that had plunged into a stream matches that of the missing Bergville family.
“Police in Ladysmith have opened an inquest docket for investigation after three bodies were recovered from a stream along the N11 road in Ladysmith on Saturday afternoon, police search and rescue, as well as visible policing unit have responded to a report of a vehicle which was spotted inside a stream after a vehicle was removed from the water, bodies of a man, a woman and a toddler were found in a decomposing state. The wreckages match the description of a vehicle in which three people were reported missing in Bergville on the New Year’s day were travelling in.”
The search for the four missing people is expected to resume, when the water has subsided. Residents, who lost everything, have appealed to the government to come to their rescue
