Church members who went looking for Nozipho Gxagxisa found her body in the seat of a car submerged in a river.
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At least three people were killed in a stormy weekend which wreaked havoc across the province, leaving a quarter of the Overberg District Municipality inaccessible by car, scores of roads flooded and fruit crops ruined.
Residents and emergency personnel were on Sunday still trying to deal with the aftermath as the foul weather shifted inland, with a hail storm in the Koue Bokkeveld area devastating fruit crops.
“Some farms estimate up to 80 percent of their crops are lost,” Wouter Kriel, agriculture and rural development ministry spokesman, said.
A number of stretches, including Chapman’s Peak Drive where there was a mudslide, are set to remain closed on Monday. The storm thrashed the Western Cape on Friday and Saturday causing mayhem. The Vergelegen Medi-Clinic in Somerset West, a police station, caravan park and old age home were among the buildings and areas that were evacuated as floodwaters rose.
A baby was born at the clinic during the storm and was then transferred to another hospital with its mother. The city said about 18 000 residents, in areas including Hout Bay, Philippi, Gugulethu and Fish Hoek, had been flooded between Friday and Saturday and the severe weather resulted in power outages and landslides along mountainous areas.
Just before noon on Sunday, a church group which conducted its own search found the body of Nozipho Gxagxisa, a teacher and gospel singer from Kuils River. Gxagxisa and a friend, Lizeka Mceko, got trapped in a car trying to cross a bridge in the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve picnic area late Friday. Both were members of the Christian Fellowship Centre in Khayelitsha and were en route to a church conference on the reserve.
The body of Mceko, a hospital worker from Khayelitsha, was recovered on Saturday from the driver’s seat of the car which had been submerged in the river, a branch of the Eerste River.
”We started our search at about 9am and waded through the water for about three hours before we got Nozipho’s body,” a rescuer, Sandile Bulani, said.
“We all had sticks which we used to poke the ground for any bodies. The water was extremely cold and dangerous for us because we are not professionals. It was really sad for us to be doing all the searching and seeing her cold body,” Bulani said.
When they had found their
friend’s body, the police and ambulance arrived. A relative, Primrose Jongile, of Gxagxasi broke down in tears.
The third fatality was a 28-year-old man who drowned while trying to cross the Breede River, Reinard Geldenhuys, the Overberg District Municipality’s head of fire and disaster management, said.
Police spokesman Tembinkosi Kinana did not have details on this incident.
Geldenhuys said in one of the rescue operations, a hiker had been missing on the Potberg Mountains during the storm on Saturday, but she was found late that night and had “suffered a little from exposure”.
Education MEC Donald Grant’s spokeswoman Bronagh Casey said all its districts were on high alert and the focus was on getting matrics to their exam venues on Monday in spite of road closures.
Casey said if any pupils were unable to access their examination centres, they would be accommodated at alternative centres or arrangements would be made with emergency services to help them where necessary. Areas of concern included Barrydale, Hermanus and Stanford.
The Helderstroom Prison in Caledon had been cut off by flood waters. Geldenhuys said the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) was transporting emergency personnel across the water in rubber ducks.
Altogether, the NSRI said on Sunday that in total, 80 ferry trips were made to assist people to cross the flooded Riviersonderend River. This included prison warders, 70 wedding guests, a group of 10 who had attended a christening, and a warden’s pregnant wife who needed to get to hospital.
Late on Friday, the Vergelegen Medi-Clinic in Somerset West, the hardest hit area, flooded and had to be evacuated in a major operation that spanned seven hours and which involved services including the NSRI, the city’s Disaster Risk Management and province’s Emergency Medical Services.
On Sunday, Biren Valodia, Medi-Clinic Southern Africa spokesman, said 127 patients had been evacuated from the clinic, which would remained closed until further notice.
A provincial government press release said the privately-run Stone Haven Old Age Home and a caravan park in Somerset West had also been among the facilities evacuated.
STORM DAMAGE
* 18 000 flooded
* 127 patients evacuated from Vergelegen Medi-Clinic
* Dozens of trees blown over
* A quarter of the Overberg is inaccessible
* Franschhoek police station is flooded and Helderstroom Prison is cut off
Cape Times