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South Africa floods: deadliest storm on record kills over 300 people

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The death toll from devastating floods in and around the South African port
city of Durban has risen to 306, the government said Wednesday, after roads
and hillsides were washed away as homes collapsed.



The heaviest rains in 60 years pummelled Durban’s municipality, eThekwini in
Zulu. According to an AFP tally, the storm is the deadliest on record in South
Africa.



“By the evening of 13 April, we have been informed that the death toll from
the floods disaster in KZN (KwaZulu-Natal) province has risen to 306 people,”
Nonala Ndlovu, spokeswoman for the provincial disaster management department,
said. Her office said the death toll was “one of the darkest moments in the
history” of KZN.



The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has described the floods as a
“catastrophe” and a “calamity”.










“Bridges have collapsed. Roads have collapsed. People have died … This is a
catastrophe of enormous proportions,” he said, addressing a local community
after inspecting the damage from the floods.



The search for missing persons is still going on, said Ramaphosa, promising to
“spare nothing” in dealing with the disaster.



“This disaster is part of climate change. We no longer can postpone what we
need to do … to deal with climate change. It is here, and our disaster
management capability needs to be at a higher level.”



Earlier the provincial health chief Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu had expressed
concern about the huge death toll, telling eNCA television that “mortuaries
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 was washed away in mudslides.



The storm forced sub-Saharan Africa’s most important port to halt operations,
as a 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.



“We see such tragedies hitting other countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, but
now we are the affected ones,” Ramaphosa said as he met grieving families near
the ruins of the church.




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.



with information from theguardian.com


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