Days of super-intense downpours in South Africa’s Indian Ocean Province of KwaZulu-Natal have left over 250 people dead, many missing and thousands displaced – with more heavy rain on the way and likely to last into next week.
A series of cyclones and tropical storms, which have hit the south-eastern parts of Africa, as well as Madagascar, have culminated over the last several days in record-breaking downpours across South Africa’s most populace province, sweeping away bridges, roads, buildings and vehicles, isolating communities and leaving a trail of destruction.
KwaZulu-Natal regional minister for health Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu has confirmed that the widespread flooding had claimed at least 253 lives by Tuesday evening, with more bodies being recovered since.
Incessant and extremely heavy rainfall has been reported across the region, with numerous places reporting more rainfall in a single day than usually recorded for a month in the rainy season, which ought to be ending but which is showing only signs of intensifying over the next several days.
With rain briefly holding off early Wednesday, President Ramaphosa travelled to KwaZulu-Natal to visit affected communities and to establish an on-the-ground assessment for himself of the extent of the damage.
Speaking to overwrought parents of four children washed away along with the building they were in, and presumed dead, the obviously deeply moved President was almost left speechless by the tragic loss about which he could do little, except to express his sorrow and consolation.
Phill Magakoe | AFP
He promised the grieving parents, who are very poor and cannot afford to bury four children at once, that authorities would assist them with burial costs, once their children’s remains were recovered.
With major roads closed due to washouts and many landslides, plus numerous bridges rendered unusable or washed away, travel across the province has been severely hampered, much slowing disaster management responses.
With a brief lifting of the rain, aerial surveys of the affected areas showed vast swathes of damage, affecting mostly poor high-density informal settlements, but also up-market expensive suburbs of Durban and other centres.
Phill Magakoe | AFP
Many open fields, school yards, even Kingsmead sports ground in Durban where a cricket test match between South Africa and Bangladesh was played, were swamped with large areas of standing water, the ground completely saturated by the seemingly ceaseless recent rains.
Climatologists have linked the spate of heavy-rainfall weather, including three cyclones and two tropical storms in the late southern hemisphere summer season, to global warming, and the La Niña sea temperature phenomenon in which warm waters move across the Pacific Ocean, causing knock-on effects around the world.
Even as President Ramaphosa, accompanied by national and regional ministers, continued his visits to affected families and communities, the predicted return of the rains began, setting the scene for a greater-yet disaster to unfold.
The South African Weather Service said more rain with heavy downpours was expected in the flooded areas and associated border province regions, lasting into early next week.
Phill Magakoe | AFP
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is currently in a La Niña state, with forecasts that it will likely remain so for weeks to come, at least.
Correlating with the Pacific Oceanic phenomenon, south-eastern and central regions of Southern Africa have this year been inundated by repeated and extended rainfall events.
Mozambique has also been heavily hit, with lives lost and much damage caused there, as well as Zimbabwe and Malawi, both suffering some flooding, and even usually arid Botswana has been impacted.
Climate experts said it was clear that regional weather patterns, not merely in this part of Africa but globally, were already in a “new weather pattern regime”, and that it was therefore “almost impossible” to say what might next happen, except that it was likely to be “historically extreme and unprecedented”.
AFP
