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For the first time since it opened eight years ago, Creation Wine Estate in the Western Cape’s Hemel en Aarde Valley is closed, all roads leading to it are inaccessible, and what damage caused by the storm is yet to be uncovered.
“It’s pretty rough out here. We are struggling with the weather and its unpredictability. I’ve never seen anything like it. We can’t move in or out,” said Carolyn Martin, who owns the estate with her husband JC.
“We were in Hermanus when the storm hit Creation, and now we can’t get up there,” Martin told TimesLIVE Premium.
“Roads are washed away, there’s debris everywhere. JC managed to get up there yesterday morning to check that the overflows aren’t blocked, but every access route was impossible.”
“Stanford Bridge was open this morning, so JC decided to go that way. But as he arrived to cross it, there was a flash flood. Fortunately he saw it coming and was able to get out, but that bridge was the only access to Creation via Caledon and the bridge has now been closed,” Martin said on Monday afternoon.
She said neighbours on the property next to Creation had recorded 200mm rainfall between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.
“Despite the crisis our municipal services are working around the clock to assist and disaster management has helped evacuate and assist families,” Martin said, adding that they were used to helping the community and were now in the unfamiliar position of being unable to help.
“People’s houses are under water, but we are all looking out and helping each other. The aid teams are out everywhere.”
Ruby Walne’s home was one of several in Stanford, close to the river, that were flooded out on Monday. Her neighbours had to break out of their house and swim across to Walne’s house, where they were all rescued by boat from the upper storey.
Walne was able to send TimesLIVE Premium photographs from their ordeal.
“We’ve just got out of the flood and are settling into a friend’s house,” she said afterwards.
Overstrand municipality was inundated with requests for assistance on flooded private plots.
Municipal manager Dean O’Neill said the first responsibility was to ensure that the stormwater systems were open and working.
“Once there’s a request for assistance to clear an erf of water, a team from disaster management will be dispatched to assess the situation specifically with regard to determining if there is any danger to the occupants lives and will then make a decision.”
“Further, note that the decision to pump the water from the erf will be guided by the availability of services and the priority of the request in the system,” he said.
Like so many other properties in the Helderberg area, Monkey Town felt the intensity of the wind and the rain.
“We lost the roof of the public bathroom in our braai/picnic area. Just after midnight last night we were awoken by the rumbling noises of the roof lifting. We also had a huge tree inside of the primate park that was lifted from the ground. The tree fell over our chimpanzees’ enclosure public viewing deck. The roof is flattened and the viewing deck damaged,” said Melissa Grobler.
She said the animals were safe.
“That is always the biggest concern when a storm of this strength comes rolling in. Tomorrow is a new day — we are waiting for the rain to stop so we can get going with the repairs. This has been a tough winter for us.
“A few weeks ago we had a huge storm as well where our entire perimeter fence collapsed due to the high winds. We are unfortunately always in the direct path of severe winds when storms hit our area,” said Grobler.
Storms battered Western Cape residents over the long weekend, and many homes have been flooded and buildings damaged. Disaster management said Stellenbosch and Franschhoek had also been affected, with several cellars flooded. No assessment of Hemel en Aarde had been done because of road closures due to fallen trees, flooding and debris. The Overberg region had been hit by extensive power outages, though some clearing had started to happen.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the worst of the winds and rain was over by 2pm on Monday.
“City of Cape Town teams from all services are responding to many calls for serious localised flooding, power outages, trees down, mudslides and more. Please be patient, teams will attend.”
“With hundreds of calls, the most serious will be dealt with first. We have called in more staff at our call centre,” he said.
Disaster management sent out appeals for soup kitchens, warm blankets and food for those who have suffered significant damage to their homes and were co-ordinating the responses.
A drop-off point for blankets, clothes and dry goods had been set up at the Hermanus fire department to help the people of Stanford and parts of Hermanus that had flash flooding.
Gift of the Givers was helping flood victims across the province with humanitarian aid.
The Gordon’s Bay Residents Association posted a public notice declaring: “Gordon's Bay is totally waterlogged, houses are flooded, we are a disaster zone. The canals are overflowing, and the roads are flooded. We ask residents to avoid Dennehof Road as the water is not dispersing, and cars are pushing the water above the sandbags and into houses. Emergency services have been alerted.”
In the Eastern Cape the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality evacuated more than 100 residents from the Pollar Park informal settlement in Kuyga on Sunday after low-lying areas flooded.
A joint operations centre was activated to respond to disaster related reports in the wake of disruptive weather warnings issued by the SA Weather Service.
Acting NMBM disaster management head Henry Lansdown said Kuyga is so far the only area that needed assistance.
“The work started around 6pm and 112 people were given mattresses and 224 blankets. We can report this morning that the residents have already gone back to their homes. We are seeing the sun come out and that will help in the cleanup of the homes that were flooded,” said Lansdown, who said the situation was being monitored and teams had been deployed to remove fallen trees and attend to damaged infrastructure.
In Limpopo calls were being made for the region between Bela Bela and the Waterberg Mountains to be declared a disaster area as firefighting units were battling to douse and control wild fires that have raged since Saturday.
The Gauteng Weather Service on Monday issued an alert of possible severe thunderstorms across the entire province between 1pm and midnight, warning of damaging winds, falling trees and flying debris.
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