Name: South Africa floods: Death toll rises | DW News
Uploaded: 2022-02-16T17:07:21.000Z
Duration: 3 min 46 s
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And more than 250 people have died in devastating flooding in the South African City of Durban and the surrounding area.

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Days of record rainfall have also left thousands of homes, destroyed roads and bridges and other critical infrastructure has been damaged by floods and landslides, hampering rescue efforts.

Military have helped to take residents to safety in the worst affected areas.

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa visited Durban on Wednesday.

What we'll go to Durban then and join DW correspondent Adrienne Krish.

Tell us more about the the situation they're in the city and its surroundings.

Well, it's bad Phil and to me it's particular, he said, how many Children were affected where I'm standing right now.

You can see behind me where the landslide is happening.

This was the room of 10 year old Ayanda that collapsed on her.

They're obviously devastating and just next to it to the camera and just turned it is another place that collapsed.

The neighbor's place where grandmother state with three Children, only one of the kids survived all these, the others died.

The youngest one was just three years old.

And as you drive through Durban today you can see this devastation and these kind of landslides all over the place on several different areas.

So it is likely that the death toll will continue to increase as the rescue workers continue.

And was the city prepared for this, this massive rainstorm.

Some city officials even said it took us by surprise how strong the storm and there's rain falls where some critics are already complaining that the drainage systems were not in in place, that there was not a proper investment into the infrastructure in the past year.

So this might have accelerated this catastrophe.

The however, keep on saying the major issue was landslides, so they Trying to push away the responsibility.

But what is clear that this area has seen those events in the past it is whether occurrence that has been happening here in the past years 2019, for example.

Also 60 people died when a similar whether occurrence came to this area as well.

But it's all over southern Africa that especially this year, we're seeing an increase the number of these and natural hazards cyclones, tropical storms, we've seen almost 200 people were killed in the tropical storm in Madagascar in february and March.

And scientists are saying that this is clearly in relation to the global climate change.

We're seeing more intense rainfalls, we see these catastrophes and this is something also South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned here, he also said, but this event, what we're seeing here now is part of climate change.

Right, And so what help is the government providing?

So as we speak Cyril Ramaphosa just came to visit this place here.

He went to several locations and the President himself to talk to the residents to see what the needs are, it is likely that they're going to declare a state of disaster for the entire province to facilitate help on the national level as well.

But we've heard also critical voices from residents here who said well, when we had the last disasters here, we've got lots of promises and little happens.

Many people are still waiting for for new houses ever since then, so some are not so optimistic.

On the other hand, we do see that help is coming in here, mattresses are brought in.

Relief organizations are trying to help those who are affected of this disaster.

At the moment, the government says the key priority is to get shelter for those thousands of people who became homeless overnight.