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JOHANNESBURG — Days of heavy rainfall off the east coast of South Africa killed at least 45 people as rivers overflowed and mudslides swept the city and surrounding areas of Durban.
The death toll is expected to rise as members of the South African National Defense Forces are called in to assist emergency rescuers in KwaZulu-Natal province, government officials said on Tuesday. Holiday homes and cottages swept along the coast in a part of the country known as a getaway for its sun, beaches and warm weather.
“We were all taken aback by the magnitude of this storm,” Durban mayor Mxolisi Kaunda said at a news briefing.
Storms have wreaked havoc in many countries in the South African region this year, displacing thousands of people and leaving dozens dead. Some scientists attributed the devastation in part to a season of storms intensifying with rising global temperatures.
The island nation of Madagascar was worst hit by a hurricane and four tropical storms in February and March that killed at least 178 people.
But storms from the southern Indian Ocean also hit the mainland. Thousands were displaced along Mozambique’s coastline, and flooding reached inland as far as landlocked Malawi and Zimbabwe. KwaZulu-Natal province in eastern South Africa also saw heavy rain and flooding in February.
On Tuesday, a new storm flooded much of the city of Durban. Footage from emergency services showed river-like sections of a national highway where shipping containers were dislodged and flooded. Two people were killed when a house collapsed overnight in the town of Verulam in the north of the city, according to a local emergency team.
According to rescue workers, the residents climbed onto the roofs of houses, office buildings and a Hindu temple to seek refuge in higher ground.
Gift of the Givers’ Bilall Jeewa In Tongaat, a town 40 minutes north of the city centre, a woman who was driving home with children on Monday evening was dragged ashore when a creek turned into an overflowing river, said Bilall Jeewa of Gift of the Givers. , a charity. The bodies of the woman and two children have been found, but the body of a third child, presumed dead, has yet to be found.
The floods also brought landslides that destroyed the roads and houses in the region. According to the video shown on national television, the lower floors of beach resorts on the north coast were buried with reddish-brown mud, while the hillside homes were dangerously hung after their foundations were washed away.
Slum towns built along rivers were among the most vulnerable, and shanty houses were washed away by floodwaters or covered in mud and debris.
In a slum in the Clare Estate, a suburb to the north of the city, residents dug through mud, metal and wood to save a family of five trapped in their barracks – but it was too late, Robert McKenzie, spokesperson for rescuers, said. Emergency Medical Services of KwaZulu-Natal.
Even as the waters receded, emergency workers were struggling to reach the affected areas. Speaking to eNCA, a national news broadcaster, Kwazi Mshengu, head of the state education department, said that this afternoon, dozens of schoolchildren and their teachers were trapped in their classrooms, awaiting rescue. He said that nearly 100 schools in the region were damaged and 500 schools were closed.
Durban’s mayor, Mr Kaunda, said large parts of the city were left without electricity and water after power plants and water treatment plants were damaged. The city is still recovering from widespread riots and looting last July, during some of the worst civil unrest to ravage South Africa since the end of apartheid.
Rain was expected to continue to hit the area Tuesday and later in the week, according to the South African Weather Service.
The heavy rains are caused by a common weather phenomenon in South Africa known as a breakpoint, where a low pressure system develops and its flow in the atmosphere is interrupted, causing a slow-moving storm.
“It’s very common for this time of year,” said Kgolofelo Mahlangu, weather service forecaster, noting that similar heavy rains battered the area around this time in 2017 and 2019.
Some climate scientists attribute the increase in the intensity of recent storms to environmental changes. A study published this week by World Weather Relation“Climate change raises risk where tropical cyclones already affect agriculture, infrastructure, livelihoods and lives,” said , an initiative specializing in pinpointing the links between climate change and individual weather events.
The study looked at precipitation levels during Cyclone Batsirai and Tropical Storm Ana in January and February. While the research noted gaps in data from the region, it found that human-induced global warming played a role in making these storms more intense.
John Eligon Ulundi contributed reporting from South Africa and Raymond Zhong from New York.
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