In South Africa’s deadliest floods on record

Floods in Durban, South Africa, killed 253 people, according to the provincial health chief, after hillsides were washed away, homes collapsed, and more people were still missing.

Durban’s municipality, known as eThekwini, was hit by the highest rainfall in 60 years. According to an AFP count, the storm is the deadliest in South Africa’s history.

“253 in eThekwini last night,” provincial health chief Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu told eNCA television when asked to update the death toll.

“The quantity of bodies we’re finding is the biggest concern,” she said. “Our mortuaries are under some stress, but we’re managing.”

The Clermont Township United Methodist Church was reduced to a pile of rubble. A wall collapsed on four children from a nearby home, killing them.

Other houses clung perilously to the mountainside, astonishingly still standing after mudslides washed away much of the land beneath them.

The hurricane forced Sub-Saharan Africa’s most significant port to close due to severe damage to a vital access road.

Shipping containers were flung around and washed up on the beach, creating mounds of metal.

Other roads were washed away, leaving gashes in the ground that were larger than large trucks.

“We see catastrophes like this in other countries like Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but today we are the ones who are being affected,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said as he met with mourning families near the disaster site.