South Africa’s flood-ravaged east was hit by more rain after the deadliest storm to strike the country in living memory killed nearly 400 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
Floodwaters engulfed parts of the eastern coastal city of Durban this week, ripping apart roads, destroying hospitals, and sweeping away homes and those trapped inside.
Emergency services in the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province, where Durban is located, were on high alert as weather forecasters predicted more rain this weekend.
“The death toll has increased and currently stands at 398, with 27 people still missing,” a government official said on Saturday, announcing that 58 hospitals and clinics had been “severely affected”.
Recovery operations and humanitarian relief are under way in the city of 3.5 million people that would normally have been teeming with Easter holidaymakers this weekend.
“It’s already raining in some parts of KZN but it won’t be as hectic as it was in the past few days,” Puseletso Mofokeng, senior forecaster at the South Africa Weather Service, told the AFP news agency.
“But because of the soil being over-saturated with water, we can still get a lot of flooding,” he warned.
Between 25mm (one inch) and 45mm (1.75 inches) of rain was expected Saturday, compared with the more than 300mm (11.8 inches) that fell within a 24-hour period in some regions on Monday.
The latest rains, which have left at least 40,000 people without 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, as she sheltered under a large umbrella by a muddy road in her Kwandengezi township, about 30km (20 miles) inland from Durban.
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