Stoney Drift News Today

Situation Report in English on South Africa about Flood; published on 4 Jun 2024 by IFRC and SARCS

Those who lost everything in Sunday’s deadly storm spent the night sheltering in an East London community hall while officials co-ordinated disaster-response efforts. At least two people were killed and many others were left homeless as gale-force winds reaching up to 124km/h ripped off roofs, uprooted trees, caused power outages and left families homeless. Many areas were left without electricity and a school lost part of its roof.

Torrential rains and gale force winds wreaked havoc across the Eastern Cape at the weekend.

Gale force winds wreaked havoc in East London and other parts of the Eastern Cape on Sunday, claiming at least two lives and causing major damage to homes, health facilities and other buildings.

Roofs of clinics and hospitals were also blown away by the winds.

Fed-up after going without power for 18 hours, angry Stoney Drift residents blocked the entrance of the Buffalo City Metro’s electricity department in Chiselhurst on Thursday morning, demanding that authorities assure them of a long-term solution to their electricity problems.

Simmering tensions between Stoney Drift ratepayers and informal settlement dwellers over illegal electrical connections reached boiling point this week, with threats to resort to violence from both sides. On Sunday evening, gunshots were fired to defuse the simmering conflict between the two groups.

Residents of Stoney Drift took matters into their own hands after illegal electricity connections left them without power all weekend. On Sunday, residents took to the streets and removed the illegal wires themselves. Stoney Drift resident Loretta Bezuidenhout said the electricity first went out on Saturday during scheduled load-shedding, but once load-shedding was over it did not come back on.

Drug peddlers and addicts, vagrants, prostitutes, house robbers and scrap metal thieves are being provided with safe bases from which to operate in the many dilapidated and abandoned houses scattered throughout Buffalo City. Even crumbling, deserted mansions in the city ’s most affluent suburbs are affected and residents fear that the homes, and the activities taking place in them, pose a very real danger to their neighbours.