The inhabitants haveten to clean the damage caused by torrential rains, while the weekend is again rainy. At least 341 people died.
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His beautiful white walls may hide a fragility. The small Methodist church of Clermont’s Township, north of Durban, South Africa, collapsed on parplegs that believed her. It was Sunday night April 10, it was 21 hours and the rain that harassed the valley for a few days was the right of this old building. By wavering, the church crushed a house that housed four children. They died under the rubble. The Father, present at the time of collapse managed to extract. Broken by the trauma, it is no longer able to express themselves.
It is the sister of the bereaved mother who receives in an illuminated piece by a candle. The carpets still feel moisture. The water has shown the hills and has been infiltrated in the houses. The sun of these last two days will not be enough to dry the buildings surrounded by vegetation. Worse, the rain comes back this weekend. “A few drops are enough to revive the memory of what happened, it’s very hard,” Sanglote Nonhlanhla Sithole. A prayer closed the visit and a 50 rand ticket (3 euros) was deposited on a plate to help finance the funeral.
In visit in Clermont Township on February 13, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised to help the families of the victims. He presented his condolences to the Sokhela family, who also lost four children in the collapse of a house. The Father, standing next to the president, told him that he did not have enough money to bury four bodies. By destroying homes, the floods buried whole families.
Nobody is missing from the call at Trevor Govender and he thanks God. One night when he looked at the television, he heard a big noise. The front court had just disappeared. “We had two steps and then the vacuum”, describes Trevor. Today, it is as if he lived above a geological section.
In the area, the lands are furniture, the soil Color rust is sandy and houses are often built on slopes above the level of the road. Trevor Govender was born in this house, he knows perfectly the foundations. But see you soon 40, he had never known such a thing. “We had heavy rains in the past, but not like these,” he restores.
Precipitation Records
Precipitation records were recorded at several places in the province. Sometimes up to 450 mm of water fell in forty-eight hours. Without being a cyclone, this storm borrowed the lethality. “We see similar tragedies hit Mozambique, Zimbabwe, but today, we are affected,” lamented the South African president. In 2019, at the Easter weekend, floods had made 85 dead.
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