Quinton Mtyala and Bongiwe Sithole
TimesLive

Floods, snow and strong winds wreaked widespread havoc across the country, claiming the lives of at least five people – two of whom froze to death – and sending emergency personnel into a rescue overdrive saving thousands of people, many of them children.

Damage estimated at millions of rands has been caused in the southern, Western and Eastern Cape. The S A Weather Service says more storms bringing strong winds and heavy rain will strike the country today and Friday, but that it will be better during the middle of the week .

Forecaster Edwin Thema warned that though temperatures would increase by two to three degrees Celsius during the week, the southern regions of the country could expect more cold fronts today and on Friday.

“The Drakensberg area will still be very cold, while people living in the southern part of the country must expect showers and strong winds on Monday [today], Friday and at the weekend,” he said.

Temperatures are expected to remain low today and Barkly East and Jamestown will record a maximum temperature of -5C. The warning comes as 41 people were rescued by ER24 paramedics and 4×4 club members in Lesotho.

Heavy snow forced major highways – including portions of the N1, the Beaufort West-Loxton Road, the Loodsberg Pass between Willowmore and Graaff Reinet and the Swartberg Pass near Prince Albert – to be closed.

Snow also saw several central Karoo farms cut off, with provincial disaster management authorities saying there was an urgent need for blankets, firewood, paraffin and food.

The Montague Pass was also closed yesterday after power lines fell across the road. Eastern Cape roads in Barkly East, Dordrecht, Queenstown, Elliot, Lady Gray and Molteno were closed and in Knysna the annual marathon, which is part of the Oyster Festival, was cancelled.

In the southern Cape, police divers spent hours searching for a woman who is believed have drowned after she was swept away in the Klip River yesterday.

In Melkhoutfontein, also in the southern Cape, seven homes had to be evacuated due to flooding. In Van Wyksdorp, 31 adults and 37 children evacuated their flooded homes, bringing the number of people who had to abandon their homes to 316 in the southern Cape.

Two people drowned – a woman in Kleinskool, Eastern Cape, y and a 43-year-old man from the Ericadene informal settlement. Areas across Nelson Mandela Bay were without electricity after power lines were blown over by the strong winds, with municipal emergency workers evacuating nearly 2000 people yesterday.

Eastern Cape Coastal Water Rescue worker John Fletcher said: “We rescued two women … who were stuck in their car in water that was waist-deep.” Kouga municipal spokesman Laura-Leigh Randall said the road to Humansdorp was closed, but the road to St Francis Bay was only accessible to 4×4 vehicles.

Nelson Mandela Bay municipal spokesman Kupido Baron said a number of areas in the municipality were hard hit by the rains.

Eastern Cape provincial Disaster Management spokesman, Captain John Fabian said that, while some motorists were trapped for hours due to road closures, no fatalities reported were reported.

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