Following two days of catastrophic weather and flooding, the mayor of Cape Town has released further resources.
In order to deal with the effects of the severe flooding in the South African city and its surroundings, Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis signed a major incident declaration on Tuesday. This opened up additional funding and relief efforts.
On September 24 and 25, the Klein River in the Western Cape province breached its banks following a period of intense rain, resulting in at least 11 fatalities.
According to Anton Bredell, the Western Cape’s provincial minister for local government and development planning, “the heavy rains are an indication of climate change, and while our early warning and mitigation systems did work, we have to keep investing.”
“We’ll be having some very serious budget discussions in the future. The effectiveness of our climate plan needs to be improved, he continued.
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Of the 11 fatalities, eight were caused by illegal electricity lines that were submerged in water and electrocuted in shacks. 84 roads were shut down as a result of the inundation.
The largest amount of rain for a September day in at least 22 years, according to the Weather Service, was recorded at two locations in Cape Town.
While a reported 80,000 people in the area are thought to still be without electricity, hundreds of individuals have been evacuated.
Aid is being distributed to the affected communities under the supervision of the Department of Social Development and the South African Red Cross Society.
Environmentalist Allan Schwarz told RT on Wednesday that “Mother Earth is 99% really pissed off and 1% it’s mostly human guilt.”
