Pretoria - Emotions ran high and families strained necks and peered across the parking area as the injured were offloaded from ambulances.
This scene played out at Steve Biko Academic Hospital where survivors of the Nigerian church collapse were taken after they were brought back to the country on Monday morning.
The relatives had waited for close to two hours for the injured to arrive, but were asked by social workers to move away from the area from where they could identify the patients being offloaded.
“We would rather you waited until they have been checked by doctors and are settled in their wards,” a social worker said, adding they could be traumatised.
Seating and refreshments had been provided as they waited for the 25 injured worshippers of Nigerian prophet TB Joshua. All talking and activity stopped when the sirens announcing the arrival of the first victims were heard.
Mixed emotions of anxiety and excitement ran high when the two ambulances – advanced life-support vehicles – came in behind police officers on motorbikes, with relatives rising to their feet as one vehicle backed up against the entrance to the emergency unit and two patients were offloaded on stretchers and rushed inside.
“We have not been able to get an update on her condition,” one woman said of her aunt.
The excitement rose as more ambulances were driven in and rolled patients out, either on stretchers or in wheelchairs.
“We appeal for patience and co-operation. Your relatives will be carefully assessed, and once they are ready for visitors you will be allowed in,” Deputy Social Development Minister Hendrietta Bogopane-Zulu said.
She explained that some of the patients would require urgent surgery, and that relatives would therefore not be able to see them.
“Three of them sustained permanent disabilities. Some require urgent medical and surgical attention, while others are not too serious,” she said. She also told the waiting relatives that because Nigeria had a number of airborne diseases, a process to decontaminate them had commenced. “They are on a 48 hour lock-down,” she said, saying families would have five minutes with those relatives well enough to receive visitors, but could not hug or kiss them.
She said because some would not be able to see their relatives due to levels of injury and treatment plans, they would be accommodated in a Pretoria hotel for the night.
“You can be here again tomorrow,” she told them. But this only raised the uneasiness and stress of some relatives, with one family with two relatives among the injured saying: “Our fears will only be quelled once we see her face and know she really is alive.”
Tears flowed openly among others, who also said they had not been in touch with their relatives, and social workers, priests and others walked among them, offering prayers, hugs and words of comfort.
But a few families knew how their relatives were, with granddaughter Che O’Connor saying her grandmother had escaped with a broken wrist. “When she called us last Monday we were frantic with worry and unable to get any information out of the organisers of the trip,” the young woman said.
The three children, who survived the collapse were being given high-care treatment, the deputy minister said.
Two of the children arrived back in South Africa as orphans.
Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe said the Department of Social Development would take care of them.
Radebe, who was briefing the media on the medical evacuation shortly after the patients were taken to hospital, did not reveal the details of the children, but a military medic on board the craft, who asked not to be named, said all three children were girls.
He said two of them, who he estimated at 18 months and 6 years old, had minor injuries. The third, whose age the medic didn’t know but said she was the eldest, was not injured.
Radebe said 84 South Africans were killed when the building collapsed. They made up most of the 115 who died.
Of the 25 people who landed on Monday, three had limbs amputated before the evacuation, while others had suffered fractures, and one had kidney failure and required dialysis.
Radebe said they had wanted to repatriate the people who were killed this past Sunday, but needed to wait for their forensics team to finalise the identification of all the bodies.
Radebe avoided diplomatic questions, including whether South Africa would issue a travel warning for citizens wanting to visit self-proclaimed prophet TB Joshua’s church, which owns the guest house that collapsed.
“We are waiting for the (finalisation of the) investigation by the Nigerian government before we take things forward,” he said.
On Monday, The Star reported how Mandla and Lufuno Mthethwa and Lufuno’s 9-year-old son Ronewa were believed to have died in the collapse, with their family losing all hope of their survival.
However, the only glimmer of hope for the grieving family was that the couple’s othertwo children, Zama and Siphelele, had survived the disaster.
Mandla’s sister Pamela told The Star that while the family were still struggling to cope with the loss of their relatives, they were relieved that the couple’s two young children had made it home safely from Nigeria.
It’s understood the two little girls will be staying with their maternal grandmother. - Additional reporting by The Star reporters Brendan Roane and Shain Germaner