DURBAN, South Africa — Grief-stricken South Africans are still searching for family members swept away by last week’s floods in which 435 people died and more than 40,000 were made homeless in the coastal city of Durban and the surrounding KwaZulu-Natal province.
The South African army has deployed 10,000 troops to help find those missing, rebuild roads, bridges and utilities, and distribute emergency aid to families made destitute by the deluge. The government has allocated $67 million in relief aid for affected families.
Families grimly persist in searches to find the bodies of their loved ones.
Joseph Nkosi, 56, of Inanda township, spends his days with neighbors searching through a debris-laden river stream for the body of his 15-year-old daughter, Ntombenhle, last seen trying to cross a low-lying bridge when the waters carried her away.
“I am heartbroken,” Nkosi told The Associated Press. “What I am hoping for now is just to find her body. I have already accepted that she is no more. All I am holding on to is her school tie which we found in this river stream.”
In a nearby neighborhood, Apollo Mdladla, 47, said he and his young daughter are struggling to cope with the deaths of 10 members of a neighboring family. A mother, her children and grandchildren all died when the floods swept away their home.
“We still have trauma. Those children used to play with my own child. Now she asks, ‘Where is Manelisa? Where is Lulu?’ I had to be honest and tell her that they have died, because she can see that they are no longer here,” said Mdladla as rescue teams searched for bodies in the pile of flotsam in his backyard.
Five bodies of the family have been found, but the other five are still missing, he said.
The largest number of deaths and homes destroyed occurred in Durban’s low-lying poor neighborhoods, where families built homes on open, unsafe ground. But middle-class and affluent neighborhoods were also hit when mudslides crushed homes built on hillsides.
Schools, churches and community halls have become shelters.
“The city remains in crisis 10 days after the storm, and it is now primarily a crisis of water and sanitation provision — to hospitals, clinics and communities. Failure to get this right could spell a deepening health crisis, characterized by water-borne disease,” said Mani Thandrayen, medical team leader for Doctors Without Borders in Durban.