Cape Town - Residents of George and the surrounding areas were still being affected by Monday’s heavy downpour, suffering continued power cuts and water outages.
Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC Anton Bredell said officials in the Southern Cape were doing damage assessments across the region following the heavy rainfall, with several roads suffering damaged.
Bredell said George saw the worst of the storm, with a handful of lower-lying areas worst affected.
While many clinics were also affected, George Municipality announced that all clinics in the area were open today, and would resume normal service delivery.
George Mediclinic hospital manager Kassie Karstens also said that they had some flooding inside their facility yesterday, but it was all cleared up now and they had been able to resume their normal operations by Monday afternoon already.
George Municipality said their Electrotechnical Services Directorate continued to work on repairs after extreme rain and flooding caused extensive damage to the power network.
George Municipality spokesperson Debra Sauer said electricians found that a mini-substation in Parkdene Lyra Street had a phase down.
“This will result in consumers having very low voltages, and some no power at all. The team is busy fault finding and should have an idea of what is wrong within the next hour,” said Sauer at 4.30pm.
Sauer said an electrician was on the way to Hansmoeskraal to attend to a complaint at Morning Glory farm, while the majority of vegetation has been cleared on Strydom line, Wilderness Heights, and lines should be pulled up shortly. Once this is done, the area could be energised.
Newly-elected George Deputy Mayor Raybin Figland today visited several sites around George affected by the flash flooding of Monday, accompanied by George Chief Fire Officer Neels Barnard.
“The recent rainfall caused untold damage to our water and stormwater infrastructure, and to ensure that residents have access to clean drinking water, the municipality has put in place a number of water trucks in various areas,” said Figland.
“I visited a few of these water truck points today and spoke to residents who expressed gratitude for the extended repair efforts.”
George Municipality said the water situation remained critical following extensive infrastructure damage, and that 10 water trucks had been sent to strategic areas throughout the eastern side of the city.
“A 500mm water line burst has been located in Oewer Street, Tweerivieren. The pipeline is situated close to the Kat River bank, and has burst at three separate sites. This pipeline has been isolated and repair work started this morning,” said municipality spokesperson Chantèl Edwards-Klose.
“Access to the site is difficult and a 7-ton excavator is being used. The estimated repair time is approximately 6 hours,” she said.
However, Edwards-Klose said civil engineers confirmed that this was not the main cause of the water loss to the reservoirs, and continued to search for further faults, with all available officials currently walking the main water lines.
The municipality asked the areas currently not affected by the water outage to limit their use of water to necessities only, as the reservoirs remained critically low following a pipe-burst this weekend, and the subsequent damage from yesterday’s flash flooding.