Weather: Will Government be better prepared for heavy rains expected in coming month

Wet weather conditions have been forecast for Spring and Summer, and it is only a matter of time before the rain buckets down.

For some, the news about heavy rains being on the cards has been warmly welcome, but not for others – particularly those living in flood-prone areas.

The last summer season saw heavy downpours being recorded in various parts of the country but this type of rainfall also left a trail of destruction and claimed hundreds of lives in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).

ALSO READ: KZN Floods: Torrential rain storm causes widespread damages & destruction

In recent months, the South African Weather Service has predicted above normal rainfall for the north-eastern parts of the country, which includes provinces such as Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, North West, Free State as well as KZN.

ALSO READ: Another wet spring and summer on the cards for some parts of SA

This rainfall forecast comes as the La Nina weather system which is associated with a lot of rain.

As the floods were wreaking havoc in KZN, a lot of questions were asked on whether or not the government had prepared.

ALSO READ: KZN floods: Ramaphosa says government needs to prepare better for natural disasters

Water expert Professor Anthony Turton questioned the government’s capacity to respond to such weather disasters of this nature.

Turton, who resides in KZN, said the damage to infrastructure that was caused by the recent floods, questioning whether or not the government will be prepared in the event of similar weather conditions.

“The capacity of the State to respond, particularly in KZN, is extremely low and we have clear evidence about roads that were washed away but still haven’t been repaired and sewage systems that were damaged have not yet been repaired.

“So, the problem is that the capacity of the State to respond is really our biggest risk and not so much on the risk in the change of rainfall patterns, it’s the inability of the State to respond and this, I can see getting worse going forward and I don’t see any indication at this time the capacity of the State improving,” he said.

Turton said that the State’s ‘soft infrastructure’ has collapsed, stressing that under the policy of cadre deployment there has been a complete hollowing out of skills.

“There is not even the ability anymore in many municipalities to even draft terms of reference to appoint a consulting engineer… They don’t even have that skill.

“Our problem is our inability to respond at institutional level, we are facing systemic failure and it not only in the water sector, its in the energy sector too as we are seeing with the problems at Eskom,” Turton said.

Meanwhile, Mitchell Krog from an independent weather website AfriWX, who says he is self-trained in weather and meteorology says almost every municipality is mismanaged and going broke and has failing infrastructure and storm drainage systems that are not maintained, stressing that even if they had five months weather warnings nothing could or would be done to address it.

“Other than putting Disaster Management on alert when heavy rain is expected, it will flood and I don’t think much of KZN will withstand another bout of heavy floods, so much soil is already unstable from what happened already and in some places entire landscapes have changed as a result.

“It’s only a matter of time before we start seeing dams fail too because they can’t last forever and none of them appear to be being maintained and no new dams have been built in this country for 2-3 decades, certainly none that I know of,” Krog said.