Floods hit Port St Johns shack dwellers the hardest
The sound of groaning metal and splintering wood woke Athenkosi Somkwala as her shack — set high on the hillside overlooking Port St Johns — was crushed beneath a landslide.
Somkwala was spared by her rickety pine bed frame, which acted as a brace against the collapsing walls, unable to hold back tons of soil.
“All I could grab was a bag with my clothes and my boots and I just ran. When I was in that room it was getting smaller and I thought I was going to die,” she said.
Her home and hundreds more were destroyed in flash floods and landslides driven by wind and rain from a violent tropical storm which lashed the Eastern Cape town on Monday, leaving four dead in the province.
Shortly before her brush with death, the 30-year-old security guard had returned from a night shift and tried to sleep.
“It was so loud and the wind was whipping when I felt the ground moving. The earth came down [from the hillside] and crushed my room. I thought the whole house was going to be pushed down the hill,” she said.
In Green Farm, a settlement on the fringes of the coastal town’s centre which was hardest hit, hundreds have been left destitute.
As floodwaters rose, teams of defence force soldiers scrambled to rescue people marooned in their shacks.
With informal dwellings perched on the steep slope which overlooks a deep valley flecked with hastily constructed homes, Port St John’s mayor, Nomvuzo Mlombile-Cingo, described their life below the floodplain as a “ticking time bomb”.
“If people continue to live there and it floods again someone’s death will be inevitable. We need to find a workable solution for this area,” she said, adding that the residents of Green Farm had balked at the prospect of being moved elsewhere
Near the crest of the hill, Live Ntlola’s timber cottage was all but felled by the shifting earth. “When I saw what was left of my house I felt so empty inside, like I had been robbed,” the farmer said.
“Everything I had is gone now. If it rains again now my house will fall down this mountain and there is nothing I can do.”
Ntlola gathered some of his crop that survived the downpour, carefully placing spinach leaves and sweet potatoes in a muddy bucket.
Hundreds who were rescued as the water rose sought refuge in the town hall and were later accommodated by lodges and B&B owners. Among the immediate solutions was the distribution of food to those most in need.
Sizwe Kupelo, spokesperson for the Eastern Cape premier’s office, said the end was not yet in sight.
“Heavy rains are still expected in that area and the provincial government is now working to allocate resources in terms of the Disaster Management Act,” he said.
While scores of people have been registering for aid at the town hall, 39-year-old Kutala Gawula has been more focused on piecing her life together at her waterlogged house.
“We tried to carry everything we could from the house but we couldn’t get it all. People here have lost so much,” she said.
“The water was rushing inside my room so quickly like a river. I took my children and we had to swim away or else I thought we would die.”