TORNADO TERROR
Dad’s prayer for his kids
● When the violent column of swirling air headed towards his home, eMpolweni father Sizanempi Msane pleaded with it not to take his sons.
His prayer to the powerful tornado worked. While the storm that struck just outside New Hanover in KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday flattened the brick home he has been building for the past two years, his sons Nsindiso, 10, and Mthokozisi, 11, were not harmed.
Msane said he had lost almost everything, and damage to his home would take R60,000 to fix. But he took solace that his family was alive and well.
He said he had been mending the fence around his property on Tuesday afternoon when he noticed dark clouds forming. “The sky just started to go black and I could see that a major storm was approaching. When the wind started to pick up, it tore my neighbour’s house apart — the sink from his home flew towards my house.”
Msane swept up his sons in each arm and rushed into one of the family’s mud houses.
“I told my adult son and my partner to run into the house because I knew they could fend for themselves. I kept telling myself, ‘should this thing come, it can take me, but not my boys’, as I ran inside the house.”
Msane and the rest of his family took cover in the house and waited for the worst of the storm to pass.
Though two of his mud houses remain standing, the brick home he had been building for two years was demolished.
“I was almost complete with that house. All I had to do was put in the door and window panes,” he said.
While Msane’s account of loss was shared by hundreds of people who lost their homes, two families are grieving over the loss of two lives in the storm.
16
THE NUMBER of fatalities, with 19 people injured, as a result of bad weather that hit the province since October 25
798
THE NUMBER
of households that have been affected by the storms
Thunyeliwe Ndlovu’s home collapsed under the force of the tornado, crushing her 40year-old son, Sphelele, and trapping her granddaughter, Zinhle.
“The entire wall from one side of the house had fallen on top of him. I was panicking, trying to move the bricks to help my son, but they were too heavy for me.
“One of our neighbours had to use a fivepound hammer to break the bricks and we found Sphe lying there already dead.”
A short distance away, in Crammond, Nonhlanhla Buthelezi, 45, was crushed to death when a tree fell onto her house.
Friends said that when she realised the severity of the storm, she told her four children to seek shelter in their neighbour’s house, saying she would follow shortly. She was trapped in the house before she could escape.
Extreme weather conditions triggering severe thunderstorms, lightning strikes, gale-force winds and heavy downpours have wreaked havoc across the province over the past two weeks.
The provincial executive council said “horrific disaster incidents”, which included loss of lives and the displacement of hundreds of families, hit the eThekwini, Abaqulusi, Jozini, uMgungundlovu, uMzinyathi, Ilembe, Harry Gwala, and uThukela districts.
Though the affected areas had not yet been declared disaster zones, the province has been on high alert since Thursday after forecasters predicted extreme flooding.
The provincial government issued warnings which led to the closure of departmental schools on Thursday and Friday. Only matric pupils and those writing national examinations were told to be at school.
The government also called on businesses to release workers early or allow employees to work from home “in the interest of public safety”.