Residents of KwaNobuhle in Kariega lined the streets carrying empty buckets and containers to collect water from tankers on Thursday. Taps have been dry since last week after the storm damaged water infrastructure.
Households in KwaNobuhle township in Kariega lined the streets on Thursday for over five hours, carrying empty buckets and containers to collect water from tankers.
This is because KwaNobuhle has been without running water this week after the KwaNobuhle trunk pipe was damaged by severe flooding at Bucwa Street.
“Residents will experience water disruptions in KwaNobuhle, as a major water main from reservoir 3 and 4 has unfortunately been washed away. Teams are on-site to close the reservoir outlet to make it safe. Almost 75% of KwaNobuhle will be without water in the interim. Water trucks will be mobilised once rain has stopped,” the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality said in a statement this week.
This follows last week’s destructive storm. This storm caused Laetitia Bam Day Hospital, the largest local clinic in KwaNobuhle, to close. Patients are now being served at a local church.
Pensioner Buyiswa Benelwa’s RDP in Duduza (Ward 45) was among the scores of homes badly damaged in the storm.
“We are battling with scarce water while we must also fix our RDP houses. I was asleep last Saturday when I heard heavy hail pelting my roof. I woke up and when I stepped on the floor, I felt water below my knees.”
The 75-year-old, who is also blind, said she was carried out of the house by her nephew just before the walls collapsed. “I cried and called out to my mother,” said Benelwa.
On Thursday, Gift of the Givers volunteers were on the ground to distribute thousands of litres of water to residents of Duduza, including Benelwa and her family.
The organisation also supplied two water trucks, along with another non-profit called Sinako, to distribute water to affected areas.
Ali Sablay, project manager at Gift of the Givers, told GroundUp, “We deliver hundreds of litres of water every day in KwaNobuhle. We have also set up 12 soup kitchens in the township. Once mop up operations finish, we will also deliver food parcels. The situation is dire.”
Sablay said they would try to find a safe place for Benelwa to stay until the house is repaired.
On Friday morning, some parts of KwaNobuhle were still without water. Ward 44 Councillor, Luzuko Ndamse (ANC), said, “We urge people to be patient. I have been informed by the municipality that water could be restored by tonight.”
The busy Jabavu Street bridge caved in during the storm.
© 2024 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.
tea kettle
Fun South African Fact: South Africa’s natural and human fossil history dates back hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. Early dinosaur fossils have been discovered in the Western Cape and up to 80% of mammalian fossils found so far have been discovered in the Karoo.
Sassy Muffin
Fun South African Fact: For an unforgettable bucket-list activity, search for the famous Big 5 (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo) on safari in one of South Africa’s national parks or private game reserves. A South African safari is an experience like no other!