Rain batters the Western Cape

STAFF REPORTERS

DISASTER teams in the Western Cape are on high alert as heavy showers continue unabated for the second week across the province, disrupting schools, causing mudslides and in one instance capsizing a yacht on its way to Cape Town.

Disaster Risk Management spokesman Wilfred Solomons-Johannes said they were heeding warnings from the SA Weather Service. “The disaster teams are on high alert,” he said.

Last night, a luxury guesthouse in Hout Bay was damaged by a mudslide while the owners were hosting a cocktail party.

Victoria Lodge owner Ronald Feldman had to send guests home when streams of muddy water came pouring into the house.

“We were running around in a panic as it came pouring in through a door in the studio and through the cat flap. It looked like a water feature,” said Feldman.

Mud was still streaming down the driveway this morning.

The floors of the office with adjoining en suite were still covered with mud.

Feldman said

they first called their building inspector and then their architect who advised them to call the city’s Disaster Risk Management.

Disaster Risk Management’s Charlotte Powell said a team was sent to the house.

“An assessment has been made and we will investigate further. No other areas or properties were affected by mudslides.”

In Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay, a devastated Regina Ndoni lost her home due to flooding. One of the supporting walls gave way and windows were blown out by fierce winds.

In some parts of the Klein Karoo and southern Cape schools are still recovering.

Marthie Bergh, the principal of Kommandantsdrift Primary in Kammanassie near Uniondale, said the school had been closed last Wednesday and Friday and by yesterday just under half of the school’s 64 pupils could still not reach the school because of flooding.

Last week, 41 schools in the Eden, Cape Winelands and Overberg education districts were closed for two days as a result of severe weather.

“By Monday all our schools were functioning as normal except for Kommandantsdrift Primary,” said Bronagh Casey, spokeswoman for Education MEC Donald Grant.

Meanwhile, four Knysna yachtsmen had a narrow escape when their yacht capsized in a squall, leaving them marooned, first on the upturned hull and then in a life raft at night in stormy seas.

Skipper Greg West from Knysna and three crew were sailing from Knysna to Cape Town and were proceeding under engine power when a sudden squall hit the yacht, knocking it over, said NSRI spokesman Craig Lambinon.

West’s wife called the NSRI at Knysna to report the yacht missing after she failed to get hold of the sailors, Lambinon said.

An international maritime rescue centre, however, reported to South African maritime rescue authorities that they had picked up a signal from an emergency position-indicating radio beacon registered to the yacht Gulliver in an area off Witsand at the mouth of the Breede River.

The men were taken to hospital to be treated for hypothermia. The yacht is still adrift at sea and a navigation warning has been issued.