South Africa's government has declared a national state of disaster to mitigate the impact of floods that have affected large areas of the country. The decision will help coordinate the emergency response, potentially involving the police service and the defense force, presidency spokesman Vincent Magwenya explained.
"The national disaster management center has received reports ranging from flooded homes, vehicles swept away by floodwaters and overflowing dams and sewerage facilities, to the loss of basic infrastructure and damage to roads, bridges and a Limpopo hospital," he said.
The provinces of Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Northern Cape, and North West suffered floods after heavy rainfall last week. This meets the requirements of Section 23 of the Disaster Management Act, stipulating that a national state of disaster can be declared if conditions such as the current ones hit more than one province of South Africa.
According to the South African Weather Service, the rains will continue this week, hitting Gauteng and parts of the North West particularly hard on Thursday.
25 January 2023, 09:59 GMT
"These conditions have been brought on by the La Nina global weather phenomenon which occurs in the Pacific Ocean but impacts on a country such as South Africa with above-normal rainfall. The presence of a La Nina event usually has its strongest impact on rainfall during the midsummer months," Magwenya said, noting that the strengthening of the phenomenon is expected to bring "above-normal rainfall and below-normal temperatures over the summer rainfall areas."
According to him, the floods could lead to a high demand for shelters, food and blankets as well as large-scale restoration of infrastructure. Magwenya added that the National Disaster Management Center (NDMC) will meanwhile continue to monitor and coordinate measures of response and recovery, including early warnings on the weather forecast.
La Nina (Spanish for "the Girl") is an atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon that involves a drop in the temperature of the sea surface across the eastern equatorial part of the central Pacific Ocean. Together with the warming event El Nino (Spanish for "the Boy"), it constitutes the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) of temperature.