THE Oudtshoorn Municipality is counting the costs in damages after recent floods that swept through the area, damaging 81 houses and leaving 100 people homeless.
Heavy rainfall, measured at 70mm at times, have swept through the Greater Oudtshoorn area since Sunday, leading to heavy floods and damage to homes and municipal infrastructure.
“The floods and hailstorm caused devastation in various communities of the Greater Oudtshoorn, severely damaging 81 houses and ripping off 24 trees,” said the municipality in a statement on Tuesday.
“The municipality received 188 complaints about power outages in municipal and private properties and 27 complaints relating to street and stormwater.
“Approximately 100 people were displaced after their houses were severely damaged. They were temporarily housed at a shelter at De Jager Sports Ground.”
Despite the damage, the municipality said its main dam, Raubenheimer Dam, which was at 30% capacity a few months ago, is now overflowing.
Mayor Chad Louw said: “This is the best news for the Greater Oudtshoorn since the town was recently declared a state of disaster for drought when the dam level reached a low of 30%.”
The municipality’s spokesperson, Ntobeko Mangqwengqwe, said the drought was declared a state of disaster earlier this year owing to the drought.
“In terms of the regulations of the Government Gazette we are still under drought. So what happened recently, we had a lot of rain which led to our dam filling up. At one stage we were at 30% (capacity) in the dam. So it was threatening the town that we would not have water.”
Mangqwengqwe said even though the municipality had to impose water restrictions for residents, the next step would be to see those restrictions eased.
He said they were happy about the rising dam level and hoped that people had learnt the importance of preserving water.
“What is important now is that we continue using water sparingly as much as possible. We shall not expect people to be over-excited and start wasting water,” he concluded.