Cape Town - Knee-deep floods have struck the Western Cape town of Paarl on Monday afternoon.
Videos shared on social media showed cars driving through a massive body of water.
Motorists and residents have been urged to be vigilant following a heavy rainfall in Paarl and other surrounding areas Monday afternoon.
According to The Village Guy, a news outlet in Paarl, experienced heavy rains, thunderstorms and flash floods, with a predicted rainfall of 70-80mm in 20 minutes and businesses and residents are all busy with operation clean-up.
As a result of ongoing flooding and heavy rainfall, Medicare EMR has confirmed that the hospital roof collapsed due to extreme floods and evacuation in progress of all staff and patients.
Some of the businesses in the area were forced to close down as a precaution.
The Drankenstein Municipality spokesperson, Riana Geldenhuys, said that several areas are also being affected by power outages due to the storm.
“The Municipality’s Electro-Technical Services division are attending to these outages and restoring power as soon as they can,” Geldenhuys said.
She further said that the Municipality is on standby to assist residents who might possibly be displaced by another storm predicted for tonight, and offer them temporary accommodation and disaster relief.
“People who would like to donate items to those residents whose homes have been flooded, are encouraged to deliver these to the Fire Station in Berg River Boulevard in Paarl,” she added.
Meanwhile the South African Weather Service had issued a warning for severe thunderstorms with possible heavy downpours, leading to localised flooding of low lying bridges, settlement and roads, and damage infrastructure were expected in parts of the Western Cape.
“Cloudy with morning fog along the west coast, otherwise partly cloudy and warm,”
“It will become cloudy with isolated showers and thundershowers over the southern parts but scattered in the east,”
“The wind along the coast will be moderate to fresh north-westerly along the west and south-west coast otherwise moderate south-westerly,” SAWS said.
IOL