New rains Saturday morning in South Africa darkened the sky and the hopes of advancing relief, after tragic floods which left nearly 400 dead and tens of thousands of victims. Rescue operations are still ongoing. “We will focus on medical emergencies“Explained Garrith Jamieson, who leads rescue teams, to AFP.
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Most of the victims of the bad weather which started last weekend on the east coast were recorded in the region of Durban, a port city in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) open to the Indian Ocean. Dozens of people are still missing. The army with helicopters and more than 4000 policemen were deployed. But at 6and day of the disaster, the hope of finding survivors is slim.
“It has been raining since this morning in some parts of the region. And even if it won’t be as violent as the last few days, as the ground is already saturated with water, there may still be a lot of flooding.“, explained to AFP the forecaster Puseletso Mofokeng, of the national institute of meteorology.
Heavy rains washed away entire sections of roads, many infrastructures collapsed. The public transport operator is urgently trying to restore the main lines of communication. Priority is given to the reconstruction of the bridges which have collapsed, completely isolating certain parts of the agglomeration of more than 3.5 million inhabitants.