Bad planning costs lives after floods
Scientists say shoddy work was at fault, not climate change
The floods in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape have left a trail of sorrow and havoc, but poor planning and inadequate governance greatly added to the death toll.
In the aftermath of the floods that claimed at least 85 lives in KwaZulu-Natal, experts said shoddy workmanship in building cheap houses, poor locations and lack of maintenance of infrastructure like storm-water drains were to blame for the high death toll.
Retired University of KwaZulu-Natal hydrology professor Roland Schulze said: “Climate change should not be used as a cop-out for poor planning, inadequate governance or for political gain.”
His calculations of the rainfall and assessment of the most recent global climate models showed that it was too early to attribute the floods to climate change.
On a visit to KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the floods were “partly what climate change is about; it just hits when we least expect it”.
Schulze said history showed that while the heavy and sustained rains were severe, they were well within what planners and hydraulic engineers should be using in their design of water-related structures.
This week opposition parties and residents blamed the eThekwini municipality for failing to repair or maintain the city’s stormwater drains following floods in 2017.
Wits University professors Coleen Vogel and Francois Engelbrecht, both experts on disaster management and climate modelling, said homes built on floodplains, in at-risk flooding areas and in areas where there was poor storm-water maintenance were at high risk during extreme rainfall.
“Those living in houses and dwellings that are not robust to periods of high wind and heavy rainfall are often … the most vulnerable to flooding and usually also suffer the greatest losses,” they said.
The professors said enhanced building design and codes, and appropriate development planning, particularly in informal environments, could enhance the robustness of dwellings and livelihoods.
Martin Lewis, the CEO of the South African Council for Planners, said RDP houses were usually built in accordance with regulations and construction standards. The challenge was nonadherence to procedures and illegally built structures.
“Methodologies have not always factored in the effects of climate change and this needs to be addressed,” said Lewis.
“Location and affordability remain key. Poor households are driven to non-ideal slopes due to exorbitant land prices,” he said.
The Council for the Built Environment said the standard and quality of RDP houses might differ from one province to another and from one municipality to another.
“There is evidence that some of the houses were poorly constructed. There is also the possibility that some contractors did not commission geotechnical studies of the sites before building the RDP houses,” said CEO Priscilla Mdlalose.
“Apartheid spatial planning placed most African residential areas on the outskirts of the cities, some parts of which are wetlands.”
It was possible that some contractors compromised the foundations of these houses in trying to cut costs.
“They build shallow foundations with normal slabs. Some houses do not have gutters to channel rainwater away from the ground surrounding it, causing erosion around the house and further compromising its foundation.
“Therefore, it is easy for these houses to succumb to heavy rains as experienced in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape,” said Mdlalose.
The quality and the mixture of the concrete in composition of the blocks could also compromise the strength of the building.
KwaZulu-Natal human settlements MEC Ravi Pillay admitted that location and stormwater management systems were “an issue in certain areas”.
But, he said, the quality of low-cost houses was not an issue.
“First, the rain and storm were of an extraordinary nature. Even formal houses built [by] the private sector were affected.
“The overwhelming majority of houses affected were in the informal settlements where people have settled on land left undeveloped precisely because it was unsuitable.
“Our preliminary assessment is that the quality of top structures was not an issue. Over the past 10 years quality assurance by the National Home Builders Registration Council has been effective,” he said.