Elliot and Cala in the Eastern Cape were still cut off from the national power grid and road contact with the outside world on Sunday afternoon, police said.
Captain John Fobian said emergency supplies were being taken into the area with 4×4 transport in the meantime and were being distributed to residents.
Heavy snowfall, between half-a-metre and a metre thick, had made many roads impassable and snow was still falling in parts of the province.
An Oryx helicopter sent to reconnoitre roads and assess damage managed to land at Elliot and liaise with people on the ground. However, the weather was deteriorating and the helicopter would have to return to Queenstown by 5pm.
About three hundred people, among them school children, were trapped at the Tiffendell Ski Resort near Rhodes.
Fobian said they were without electricity and their generator was ”giving problems.” They were making use of candles and paraffin instead. Roads to the resort were closed and snowfalls was preventing helicopters’ access to the area. Telephone lines to the resort also appeared to be down.
”Rescue teams will be sent to the resort in case of emergencies, Fobian assured.
Many power and telephone lines throughout the Drakensberg region had snapped under the weight of the snow accumulated on them or because of trees collapsing on them.
Damage throughout the area had been severe and Fobian put it at R20-million and rising.
”There has been lots of damage to Barkly East, Ugie, Indwe and Elliot.
In the latter town several roofs of shops and buildings in the central business area had collapsed under the weight of the snow — a cubic metre of the frozen water weighing a metric ton, giving looters access to the premises.
Two people were arrested in connection with looting on Saturday and another eight — all women — early on Sunday morning. They were scheduled to appear in court on Monday.
Eight people were reportedly also arrested at Cala, a town separated from Elliot by a mountain pass, and would appear in that town’s court on Monday.
A Queenstown police representative said the eight were released after their arrest as police had nowhere to detain them. With the town snowed in escape was unlikely.
Emergency services personnel and police, including some from the elite commandos from the special task force, based in Cape Town, were also ready to rescue anyone caught in the open.
”There have been no calls for any search-and-rescue operations today,” he said.
Meanwhile, the search for the last missing person, who presumably drowned when a bakkie was swept off a low-level bridge over the Ngwani River between Idutywa and Willowvale, was continuing.
At least eight people drowned in the incident. Police recovered seven bodies in the vehicle and the eighth on a riverbank nearby.
The driver, Simphiwe Laki (30) of Nqabarha, near Idutywa, managed to jump from the bakkie before it was swept away but he has since disappeared. Police were searching for Laki and had opened a case of culpable homicide against him.
A 25-year-old passenger with a five-year-old child reportedly stopped Laki when she saw the river was flooded and got out of the vehicle. Laki then attempted to negotiate the bridge with nine passengers inside his bakkie but the bridge collapsed and the vehicle was swept away.
Fobian said salvage operations to refloat two ships that ran aground off the coast during the furious storm that caused the heavy snowfall and the flooding were continuing.
The tanker, the Nino, ran onto a sandbank on Thursday. The ship is half a kilometre offshore from the pristine Dwesa nature reserve, south of Coffee Bay and is carrying thousands of tons of petrol and diesel fuel.
Smit Marine SA was also responsible for the recovery of a second ship, a cargo carrier loaded with grain, the Sagittarius, that ran onto the rocks outside East London’s harbour. – Sapa