A wall of water 10-13 feet high in places flowed out of the river, the head of the provincial government said, washing away victims with parts of their houses and trapping others inside their homes
The death toll in floods in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province has risen to 86, the police minister said Saturday as rescuers continued to retrieve bodies from the floodwater.
Senzo Mchunu, the country’s top law enforcement official, spoke to police rescue teams that have been searching for missing people and recovering bodies in and around the town of Mthatha since the floods hit in the predawn hours of Tuesday.
Mchunu said the floods were a tragedy but urged local residents to ignore what he called inaccurate reports spreading on social media that the disaster was caused by someone opening the sluice gates at a nearby dam, leading to water surging through communities. Mchunu said the Mthatha Dam in question did not have sluice gates.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday during a visit to Mthatha that authorities would investigate if there were any problems with the local dam that might have led to the tragedy.
A wall of water 3-4 meters (10-13 feet) high in places flowed out of the river, the head of the provincial government said, washing away victims with parts of their houses and trapping others inside their homes.
Ramaphosa partly attributed the rains and floods to climate change and said some of South Africa’s coastal regions were now constantly vulnerable to weather-related disasters. More than 400 people died in flooding in and around South Africa’s east coast city of Durban in 2022, which a study linked to climate change.
The floods in the Mthatha area and a neighboring district caught many people unaware despite weather services issuing warnings last week that an extreme cold front was heading for the region, bringing heavy rains and gale-force winds.
The largely rural region is one of the country’s poorest and authorities said communities living in informal housing close to the river were especially vulnerable when it burst its banks. Authorities have been criticized for the rescue response but also for the state of the infrastructure in the area.
Officials believe that people are still missing and the death toll could rise further as rescue teams have been searching through floodwater and damaged homes for nearly a week. One of the bodies retrieved on Saturday was that of a boy that rescuers believed was around 13 or 14 years old.
Many children are among the dead, although authorities haven’t given an exact count. Some of the victims were washed up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away from their homes by the floods.
Authorities say they expect more bodies to be recovered as rescue teams search the floodwaters and what is left of damaged houses and other structures to look for those still missing. Many children are among the dead. “I need psychological help because I saw people dying in front of me. They were being dragged by the water along with the corrugated iron,” said Zinathi Vuso, a resident of Mthatha.
“Others tried to hold or climb onto something, but it would break and they ended up dead,” Vuso said. “That is why you are seeing people still getting recovered and others are yet to be found.”
Bodies were found by search teams up to 2 kilometers (more than a mile) away from where the victims were believed to have been during the flooding. Authorities were appealing for residents to report missing people so rescuers could get a better idea of how many people they were still looking for, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa, who led a national government team deployed to the province earlier in the week, said on national broadcaster SABC late Thursday.
“We are in a crisis. A real disaster,” Hlabisa said. “The more water subsides, the more people will be found.” Some South African coastal areas are vulnerable to extreme weather blowing in from the Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean. More than 400 people died in flooding in and around the east coast city of Durban in 2022.
Many victims of this week’s floods in the Eastern Cape were living on flood plains near rivers. Poor areas with informal housing were the worst affected, government officials said.
