- JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
(AP) - Some areas in eastern South Africa were declared disaster zones
Monday after heavy rains and snowfall caused power failures, destroyed
homes and trapped commuters, killing at least 22 people, officials said.
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- "Everybody's on high alert and ready," said
John Fobian, the police rescue coordinator. "It's very devastating."
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- Most deaths were from hypothermia and drownings and more
than 3,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern
Cape provinces, the hardest hit regions.
-
- On Monday, emergency workers discovered the body of a
man who died of exposure after his shack collapsed in Cala, about 1000
kilometers (620 miles) southeast of Johannesburg.
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- More bodies were likely trapped beneath the snow, which
rose as high as a meter (3.3 feet) in some areas, Fobian said.
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- Workers were deployed to issue blankets, food and candles
and establish medical centers in northern areas of the Eastern Cape. Damage
to hundreds of schools, farms and business in the Eastern Cape is estimated
at 20 million rand (dlrs two million) but that number could climb, officials
said.
-
- While conditions improved Monday, rescue workers were
braced for another cold front expected to hit the region Thursday, Fobian
said.
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- The weather also caught hikers and tourists off guard
in the Drakensberg mountain range southeast of Johannesburg.
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- On Monday, 32 tourists trapped in a resort there were
airlifted to a nearby town by the army.
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- "If we hadn't evacuated them they would have been
stranded for another five days, and they were running out of food and more
importantly sources of heat," said Steve Cooke, a civilian who helped
with rescue efforts.
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- Elsewhere in the same mountain range, rescuers said 16
students evacuated >from a snowed-in campsite were in good condition
Monday.
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- Eastern South Africa has been battered by a week of cold
weather.
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- On Thursday nine people drowned when the pickup truck
they were traveling in was swept off a flooded bridge, about 600 kilometers
(375 miles) south of Johannesburg.
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- In other weather related developments, livestock have
frozen to death and two ships ran aground in heavy storms off the country's
eastern coast. Twenty people were arrested for looting stores abandoned
during the storm, the South African Press Association reported.
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- The snow had also trapped more than 130 drivers last
weekend in their vehicles for 24 hours, with heavy flurries initially preventing
rescue helicopter from reaching them.
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- Because of blocked roads rescuers had to airlift vacationers
stranded at an Eastern Cape ski resort.
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