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Floods, road closures and power cuts plunge Joburg suburbs into misery

Gill Gifford Senior journalist
Power cuts, heavy rains and flooding hit Johannesburg communities on February 5 2022.
Power cuts, heavy rains and flooding hit Johannesburg communities on February 5 2022.
Image: Supplied

Persistent rain, lightning, load-shedding, flooded houses and bridges, stormwater drains blocked by debris and areas sealed off caused misery for many Joburg residents on Saturday.

“It’s chaos out there,” said new Fourways councillor Mark van der Merwe. “I managed to get to sleep at 3am but I am up again now.

“I’ve just been notified that between Douglasdale and Jukskei Park things are backed up. Sloane Street is flooded and we are not just talking storm water drains and open culverts, it’s entire bridges that are blocked.”  

On his way home on Friday, Van der Merwe encountered the chaos as he tried to drive into Douglasdale and found the area gridlocked.

“I have a 4x4 so I drove up the roadside and saw there was a car pretty much submerged. The tow truck guys managed to get in there and calm things down a bit,” he said.

As load-shedding ended, transformers began tripping and areas were again without power.

A tree blocking Platina Bridge in Jukskei Park was removed by community police forum members who arrived with chain saws.
A tree blocking Platina Bridge in Jukskei Park was removed by community police forum members who arrived with chain saws.
Image: Supplied

In one instance a fallen tree blocked Plantina Bridge. “The community police forum (CPF) guys got their chainsaws out and cleared it while the City Power guys were running all over the place,” said Van der Merwe.

“We were escalating reports every two hours, but high voltage cables and lots of water don’t mix well so the teams had to wait for the rain to stop.”

That happened at about 2am, and crews went out to fix the reported outages and stabilise the power supply.

“But at about 2.30am our CPF guys were out on patrol when a substation transformer blew up in front of them. It just exploded, and the flames were about 3m high. The guys at City Power have been working on it solidly non-stop since then.”

Van der Merwe, who has been a volunteer in the area for the past 10 years, said while he was used to handling an average of five issues a day, this had recently peaked to 72. On Friday he received well over 200 calls for help.

“It’s a busy weekend now for all of us,” he said early on Saturday after waking up to 10 missed calls and a string of messages on WhatsApp and Telegram.

In the Free State, a bus with 86 passengers on board was stranded in floodwaters on the R30 between Allanridge and Bothaville on Saturday.

Police spokesperson Capt Stephen Thakeng said the Intercape bus was on its way from Mthatha to Pretoria when the driver ignored road closure signs.

Police divers rescued the passengers and no injuries were reported, Thakeng added.

TimesLIVE


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