CAPE TOWN - The Sun City Resort management on Wednesday confirmed “everything” was largely back to normal, especially at all the public areas following last week's severe hail storm.
“Everything is largely back to normal, especially at all the public areas. We worked through the night on Saturday, Sunday and Monday to turn the resort around and guests or visitors arriving at Sun City now would not realise that a storm of this magnitude took place. There is very little visible damage that remains to be seen,” said Raul de Lima, Sun City Resort Group executive.
The holiday resort near Rustenburg in the North West was damaged during a severe hail storm on Saturday afternoon. Guests had to be evacuated and accommodated in nearby guesthouses around Mogwase and Ledig which are close to Sun City but were not affected by the hail storm.
“To put the storm into perspective, we saw clouds forming and starting to darken in the afternoon. There was a little bit of precipitation, just light rain for two or three seconds but it disappeared and we all thought the rain was passing over,” explained De Lima.
“Then suddenly we had a massive downpour of rain followed by hail which lasted not much more than 25 minutes. To contextualise the storm, in December Sun City usually gets 25 ml of rain for the whole month, whereas we got 85 ml of rain in less than half an hour.”
De Lima said there were only two injuries caused when two ladies slipped in water. They were taken to hospital but were released on the same day.
“We are very grateful that there were no further injuries and it’s nothing short of miraculous, to say the least. Our insurance mobilised very quickly, sending their assessors on Sunday to begin the job of quantifying the damage. They understand it was a freak storm and we are covered for that.”