Flooding 'worse than in 1981'

2003-03-26 10:02

Cape Town - With dramatic tales emerging of people being rescued from a mass of water, certain parts of the Southern Cape are facing a water shortage.

Die Burger reports that a water plant in the Sedgefield and Heidelberg region was damaged and residents were warned to use water sparingly.

Western Cape Agriculture MEC Johan Gelderbom reckons the weekend flooding is worse than the Laingsburg floods of 1981.

Approximately 100 000 cases of wine to the value of R12 million was damaged at the Van Loveren wine estate near Robertson.

No lives were lost when the Little Karoo town of Montagu and the surrounding area were hit by storms and floods on Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday.

The relief co-ordinator for disaster management in the Boland Roy Veldman said on Tuesday most people caught up in the floods were rescued while others had made their way to safety.

Officials and rescue workers spent most of Tuesday surveying damage to the surrounding area from the air.

Veldman said there was a lot of damage to roads and bridges while the damage to houses in low-lying areas was not been significant.

People were evacuated from their homes for their own safety.

Veldman said some vineyards were flooded but fortunately much of the fruit had already been harvested.

He said the Bellair dam, a secondary gravel dam between Barrydale and Touws River, was broken but water had flowed into the Touws River.

Police spokesperson Superintendent Patrick Lee, speaking from the joint operations centre in Robertson, said a helicopter pilot had first reported that part of the dam wall was swept away.

Lee said a farmhouse, which was caught in the path of the water, was flooded but no injuries were reported.

Lee said about 500 people, mainly from Montagu and the McGregor area, were being housed in community halls in Montagu after their homes were flooded.

Western Cape Community Safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane and Social Welfare and Poverty Relief MEC Marius Frans as well as Gelderbom were taken on a helicopter tour of the area to gain a first-hand insight into the flood damage.

"It is truly a disaster that hit the area," Gelderblom said after the tour.

He said he was shocked at the extent of the damage to farms and winelands.

Vineyards under mud

"The flood waters have virtually destroyed irrigation infrastructure, pipelines and drip systems. Vineyards are under mud, and erosion has left the land spoilt."

Gelderblom said broken bridges meant that farmers would not be able to transport their products to market.

"As for wine farmers, they will really feel the impact of the damage at harvest time next year."

Gelderblom said that although all was being done to repair electricity and telephone lines, it would impact on the quality of fruit, wine and other products.

He said some milk farmers had, because of the electricity cut-off, resorted to manual labour to milk their cows.

"As for tourism, the damage on Route 62 will impact on accessibility to our tourism villages with people travelling to the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn at the weekend having to choose their routes carefully."

Gelderblom said as soon as roads were more accessible, officials from the Western Cape Department of Agriculture would be able to assess the damage to the agricultural industry in the area.

"They will present a report to Western Cape premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk," Gelderblom said.

Ostrich chickens, angoras lost

Gelderblom said he had been informed that a farmer in Prince Albert had lost about 1 000 angora goats and a number of ostrich chicks.

Van Schalkwyk and Finance MEC Ebrahim Rasool will undertake a helicopter inspection of the devastated areas on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, provincial local government spokesperson Jan Bosman said the water levels in the rivers had begun subsiding on Tuesday afternoon.

He said the only river still in flood was the Breede but it did not pose a direct threat.

Bosman said that apart from damage in Montagu, the storms also caused damage in other southern Cape towns.

In an informal settlement in George, some houses suffered structural damage while electricity and telephone lines were down in the Buffels Bay area.

He said some chalets in Knysna had also been damaged.

SA National Parks (SanParks) said in a statement issued in Pretoria that heavy rains caused extensive flooding in the Wilderness National Park and the surrounding residential areas in the Wilderness and Sedgefield.

SanParks media liaison officer Wanda Mkutshulwa said the Swartvlei estuary had flooded large areas in the vicinity of Sedgefield.

Mkutshulwa said more than 150mm of rain fell in the area between 17:00 on Monday and 05:00 on Tuesday.

Mkutshulwa said local police and the National Sea Rescue Institute assisted by SanParks staff evacuated guests from low-lying areas and caravans to chalets, built on stilts. All 80 guests of the national park were safe.

- SAPA