Water, water everywhere
● The floods in Durban and surrounding areas have caused far worse damage than the looting rampage in July last year did, two company executives involved in the recovery say.
The death toll has soared higher than 440 after days of torrential rain that began falling early last week, unleashing floods and mudslides that swept away homes and damaged infrastructure.
This week KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and parts of the Eastern Cape were still counting the costs of the damage.
Paul Matthew, CEO of the Association of Meat Importers & Exporters, says: “It’s definitely worse than July because the infrastructure damage is way more significant than the July riots.”
Matthew says a full picture of the impact has yet to emerge. “It is an unfolding situation, RCL Rainbow [a chicken producer] already came out saying they are battling with production, Astral was not producing for a few days [at its Camperdown plant].”
He says about 15,000 pallets of poultry products in the Bayhead cold store were affected, even though power had been restored.
The head of Auto & General Insurance, Ricardo Coetzee, says the floods have “affected more domestic homes, vehicles and businesses” than the riots did.
Coetzee says it is too soon to assess the overall costs because claims were still being submitted. “We have received an increase of 15% in claim volumes since the storms started.”
It has also been difficult for insurance assessors to reach places were storm damage has been worst, he says.
Coetzee estimates the cost to the insurance industry will run into hundreds of millions of rands. “Some homes have to be completely rebuilt so it’s difficult to determine a repair timeline. We are, however, working around the clock,” he says.
Engineers and businesses are still assessing the damage, but repairs are expected to run into billions of rands, far exceeding the financial impact of the July rampage.
Damage to infrastructure has cut the water supply to large parts of the province,
It’s too early to tally the economic damage of the KZN disaster, but it far outstrips the riot damage of last year
especially Durban, and disrupted transport between the city and the rest of SA.
Freight routes that carry essential imports and exports such as food, pharmaceuticals and fuel are among the 1,300 roads under repair.
The main arteries hit are the N3 to Gauteng, the N2 along the east coast, the M7 — a critical local highway — and Bayhead Road, the key route serving the harbour, which handles 13,000 heavy vehicles a day.
Durban port manager Mpumi Dweba-Kwetana says the harbour has been back in operation since last Friday. “Terminal operators are fully operational,” she says.
More than 400mm of rain fell in the heaviest downfalls last week, destroying about 4,000 homes and scores of businesses. The government says another 8,300 homes were partly damaged and about 40,000 people displaced, many of whom are living in community halls and the homes of good samaritans.
In declaring a state of disaster on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the government had budgeted R1bn in aid for KZN and the Eastern Cape.
Ramaphosa said initial assessments indicate that businesses in the eThekwini municipality accounted for almost half the reported damage, but public offices, schools and health facilities were also badly hit.
About 50 people are still missing, Ramaphosa said, and
more than 270,000 pupils could not go to school because of damage to roads and bridges. A total of 66 public health-care facilities were damaged.
“A comprehensive assessment of the economic cost of these floods still has to be made, but it is clear that it will run into billions of rands for the rebuilding of infrastructure and loss of production,” he said.
Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of SA, says the full impact on the agricultural sector is not yet clear. Food security is unlikely to be affected, though the disruption of infrastructure will reverberate throughout the agricultural economy.
“If the government, Transnet and logistical role-players continue working effectively at finding alternative routes to the port … then we should not have a near-term food security concern for the country.”
He says though KZN is not a dominant producer of food domestically, it plays a critical role in connecting the country’s food system with the rest of the world through the port.
“On average, 75% of the country’s grains are transported by road annually, which are in bad shape because of excessive rains and generally poorly maintained roads in many small towns,” he says.
“These are largely exported through Durban. The same is true for imported food products such as rice, wheat and palm oil. The volumes are also large for horticulture [and] specifically citrus, a leading exportable agricultural product in SA.
For this reason, Sihlobo says the damage done in KZN will cascade down the country’s entire food supply chain.
“In the case of citrus, SA is at the start of its export season, which makes conditions even more challenging for the industry,” he says.