The heavy downpours in Kwazulu-Natal Province have already knocked out power lines, shut off water services and disrupted operations at one of Africa’s busiest ports of Durban, the main eastern coastal city.
“What makes me angry is that this situation is always happening,” Mlungeli Mkokelwa, a 53-year-old man who arrived at the settlement a decade ago to look for work that he never found, told Reuters TV.
Climate change activists are calling for investments to help communities around the world better prepare for worsening weather, as Africa’s southeastern coast is expected to see more violent storms and floods in the coming decades linked to human emissions of heat-trapping gases.
The latest rains, which have left at least 40,000 people with no shelter, power or water this week, are expected to continue until early next week.
“We’ve got no water, no electricity, even our phones are dead. We’re stuck,” said Gloria Linda, sheltering under a large umbrella by a muddy road in her Kwandengezi township, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) inland from Durban, before meandering down a dirt track to a funeral of a friend killed by the floods.
Elsewhere in Kwandengezi, a family stood in the rain looking at their collapsed metal shack, one of several homes that lay in ruins.
The death toll was now 398, with 27 people still missing. In places wrecked by flooding, many relatives were searching only to recover victims’ bodies for burial.
“We phoned the police, we phoned the ambulance, we phoned fire brigade, none of them responded in time,” Muzi Mzobe, 59, a prefessional landlord in Kwandengezi, told Reuters in front of a pile of rubble — what was left of a house he was renting out to tenants who were killed in it.
Communities of Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu search for the bodies of loved ones:
Meanwhile, the uMdloti area on the north coast of Durban is still without water. This after heavy rains damaged water infrastructure leaving both residents and businesses without water.
The extent of the damage is severe that it will still take days before water is restored.
Salt and Light Foundation’s Kevin Singh says they have rolled their sleeves and brought over 300 bottles of five litres to residents of uMdloti.
“For today, it was 380 bottles of 5 litres each and we will be back again soon for the next batch and when this crisis hit one of the essentials we realised it is water and we decided to focus on bringing water and it is called KZN Water Drive where we linked up with our partners out of the province and locally to source as much water as possible. The devastation we have seen here in the much beautiful area of uMdloti has really broken our hearts on the north coast we will try and do our best I think the best is to look around you, every person can help one of us cannot do everything ourselves.”
There are fears that the death toll might increase as more people are still missing.
KZN Floods | Gift of the Givers involved in search and recovery mission:
