At least six people have been confirmed dead while five others were missing in the torrential rainfall that battered the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) South Coast over the past two days.
Police rescuers said homes and businesses had been flooded, rivers had burst their banks, bridges had collapsed, cars had been swept away and structures, including railway tracks, had been damaged.
Police spokesperson Superintendent Zandra Hechter-Wiid said at least three people had died in the area that she covered on the South Coast while her colleague, Captain Vincent Pandarum, said another three had died in the remaining South Coast areas.
The KwaZulu-Natal South Coast area includes at least eight municipalities.
A 20-year-old woman drowned and an eight-year-old boy was crushed to death by a falling shack. The body of another woman was recovered on Thursday in the Boboyi area, outside Port Shepstone.
Pandarum said a vehicle with eight occupants in Umkomaas had been swept away. The bodies of three occupants had since been found — 16-year-old Nokthula Ngwenya, 14-year-old Focus Mathe and the driver, Deon Mthethwa.
Four others swam to safety while one occupant of the car was still missing.
In Umzinto, Thembiso Khumalo (9) and Steven Ndebele (12) were on their way to school when they were swept away by flood waters. Their bodies have not yet been found.
In Hibberdene, a child was missing after being swept out by raging waters. In Riverside Park, a man went missing after a tree uprooted and crashed through his home. His body has not yet been found.
Meanwhile, the Durban Weather Bureau on Thursday said the heavy downpour had broken four rainfall records, one of them dating back to 1964.
”It was very heavy rain … it is not unheard of, it has happened in the past, but I think this particular time, it seems to have broken a few records,” said senior forecaster Colin Anderson.
He said the floods had displaced at least 1 000 people and that the heavy rain was caused by a ”very damp easterly south-easterly air flow that came off the sea”.
”As it rises, it produces the cloud and rain,” he said.
Four weather stations reported new rainfall records for the month of June in the province, including Paddock, which reported rainfall of 382mm on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.
The previous record in Paddock was 337mm recorded in 1964. Margate recorded 189,2mm, the most since 1997 (141,2mm), while Ixopo reported 36,6mm compared with 31,6mm last year. Pennington South broke its record from last year with 189,4mm.
”It seems the worst is over for now,” Anderson said.
”It is still cloudy and it appears as if there’s still light rain on the North Coast towards Richard’s Bay, but the rain has basically stopped on the South Coast,” he said. — Sapa