Cape Town - Another cold front including disruptive rain, strong winds and waves up to six metres.
That is what can be expected in the city on Monday, the SA Weather Service has advised.
The City said its services were on standby to deal with any impacts related to the predicted adverse weather conditions, like clearing flooded roadways, blocked drains and trees.
Residents have been urged to help reduce flood risk by clearing out drainage systems, rising the floor level of a structure so that it is higher than the natural ground level, making sandbags, digging trenches around the house to divert water away and reporting blocked drains, intakes and illegal dumping.
Illegal dumping in the stormwater canals and sewers make flooding worse.
“Cape Town has experienced significant rainfall in the past two weeks, and some areas remain waterlogged. The City is providing as much assistance as possible to affected communities,” the City said on Sunday.
Its teams have conducted about 300 on-site assessments to date in total following the severe storms which caused localised flooding especially affecting low-lying informal settlements.
“Our informal settlements teams have handed out approximately 2 500 flooding support packets already, over and above the individual plastic sheeting and sandbags, where it has been possible to do this. In about 70% of all new unlawfully occupied areas, feasible flood mitigation is not possible due to the low-lying terrain, including floodplains, wetlands and waterlogged areas.
“In addition, some of the land that has been occupied is situated in dams, such as in ‘Ethembeni’ in Khayelitsha or is privately owned such as Siqalo in Philippi. Many of the flooding hotspots are in the recently occupied areas such as in Mfuleni, Kraaifontein, Dunoon and Khayelitsha. The spike in unlawful occupations since the start of the March 2020 Covid-19 lockdown is causing severe challenges on the ground, as we can see from the high level of flooding incidents and where they have occurred,”said the human settlements Mayco member Malusi Booi.
Any weather-related emergencies can be directed to the City’s Public Emergency Communication Centre by dialling 021 480 7700 from a cellphone or 107 from a landline.
Cape Times