Police in South Africa are using stunning grenades to disperse a crowd calling for more and better official aid for the victims of the deadly floods earlier this week.
A demonstration Thursday briefly blocked a major highway in the eastern city of Durban, killing more than 300 people in recent days.
President Cyril Ramaphosa described the “huge catastrophe” and attributed the disaster to the climate emergency.
South Africa is preparing for heavier rainfall in areas affected by record rainfall earlier this week.
“This tells us that climate change is serious, it’s here,” Ramaphosa said as he visited the flooded eThekwini district of the capital, which includes Durban, on Wednesday. “We can no longer postpone what we need to do and the measures we need to take to tackle climate change.
Analysts often fear that climate change will put enormous stress on already fragile or weaker countries, exacerbating existing problems and forcing governments with limited money to use scarce resources to offer relief or recovery from extreme weather events.
The South African Meteorological Service has warned of continued strong winds and rain, leading to the risk of new floods in KwaZulu-Natal and some other provinces over the weekend.
Meteorologists said they were surprised by the flood. Some parts of KwaZulu-Natal record almost their average annual rainfall for 48 hours.
“While the impact-based warnings were indeed issued in a timely manner, extremely heavy rainfall appears to have exceeded even the expectations of the South African meteorological community as a whole,” the meteorological service said in a statement.
The Office said that although it is impossible to attribute a single event to the climate crisis, “we can say with confidence that worldwide (as a direct result of global warming and related climate change) all forms of severe and extreme weather conditions … are becoming more frequent and extreme than in the recent past. In other words, heavy rains like the current incident can be expected … to be repeated in the future and with increasing frequency. “
The death toll is expected to increase as search and rescue operations continue, officials said, and the full extent of the damage is clear.
Thousands were left homeless by floods, roads and bridges destroyed, and at least 248 schools damaged. In one city, a Methodist church was swept away. A Hindu temple was severely damaged in Umhlatuzana, Chatsworth, near Durban, after a river overflowed its banks. Elsewhere, floods caused huge landslides. The port of Durban, the busiest in South Africa, was also hit hard.
In Amaoti, a town north of Durban, residents were balancing precariously on the edge of a broken road, trying to fetch clean water from a broken pipe below.
The floods have destroyed water and power cables in large parts of Durban and the surrounding eThekwini metropolitan area, and will take at least a week to restore these services, Durban officials said. NGOs struggled on Thursday to provide relief to the severely affected communities.
The damage to Durban and the surrounding eThekwini metropolitan area is estimated at 757 million rand (39 million British pounds), eThekwini Mayor Mksolisi Kaunda said on Thursday.
At least 120 schools were flooded, causing damage estimated at more than 380 million rand, and forced authorities to temporarily close all schools in the province. At least 18 students and a teacher have died in the floods, Education Minister Angie Motsekga said. “It’s a disaster and the damage is unprecedented. What is even more worrying is that more rain is expected in the same areas that are already affected. ”
The volunteers said they were desperate to get food, clothes and other necessities.
In a dark hall in the Glebelands hostel district in Durban, volunteers used torches from their mobile phones to register dozens of displaced people overnight. “We just help people because we care,” said Mabheki Sohela, 51, who helped organize a temporary shelter at the community center.
The ruling African National Congress, which has been in power for nearly 30 years, has often been criticized for inadequate responses to natural disasters.
Rescue efforts by the National Defense Forces of South Africa have been delayed as the military wing was affected by the floods, but the military has already deployed personnel and helicopters to deliver humanitarian aid.
Rain continued in parts of Durban on Wednesday afternoon and a flood warning was issued for the neighboring province of Eastern Cape.
Durban was the center of a deadly riot last July that killed more than 350 people, the worst riots in South Africa since the end of apartheid.
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