Johannesburg – Heavy rains have caused major havoc in the south of the city, where rescue services conducted a delicate and skilled operation, resulting in the safe retrieval of all passengers onboard a sixty-seater passenger bus in Orlando, Soweto.
Emer-G-Med said about 06h30 on Friday their Emergency Operations Centre received a frantic call from a female passenger on a bus which she explained was stuck in the torrential rains, and rapidly taking in water.
“Stuck in the heavy downpour in an unknown area with water levels rising, the bus was beginning to rapidly take on water and understandably the caller was in distress and could not accurately explain her location or a landmark,” recounted Emer-G-Med.
“The Emergency Dispatcher requested the caller to send a GPS location over WhatsApp messenger, whilst the Emer-G-Med Emergency Operations Centre, together with First Assist, sprung into action.
“Once the EOC received the location, multiple rescue units from the city of Johannesburg, the South African Police Services and Emergency Medical Services, as well as the First Assist Commercial Heavy Duty Towing division mobilized to the location.”
In a related development, City Power said it was monitoring the flooding in most of the southern and western regions of Johannesburg.
“The roads around Klipspruit, Florida, Lenasia, and some parts of Roodepoort are flooded making it difficult for our teams to respond as quickly as we would want to the outages in the affected areas,” said City Power Spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
The City’s Disaster Management has issued a flood warning and placed teams on high alert.
“Heavy rains of yesterday made matters worse in areas such as Lenasia and Roodepoort where there is huge flooding currently,” lamented Mangena.
The floods have also affected electricity supplies in some areas in the South.
“A mini substation exploded after it got flooded along Peacock Rd in Lenasia, leaving residents without power. We can only attend to it after the water has subsided,” explained Mangena.
“Many others are submerged, some poles and overhead lines blown. Water also seeped through into the vandalised infrastructure, tripping in some areas.”
Mangena said City Power was dealing with huge backlogs in different parts of the City.
He said: “Outage calls this morning sitting close to 4 000. Half of those calls… [were logged] over 24hrs, with areas such as Hurthill, Randburg, Roodepoort, and Lenasia heavily affected”.
“While most of the trees on our infrastructure have been cleared, it is the integrity of the equipment that we are monitoring and attending to.
“These include the flooded chambers, submerged mini substations, washed up poles, eroded cables, cable faults with some popping in the aftermath of the heavy storms.”
Mangena said flooded roads were hampering City Power teams’ recovery and repair efforts.
“We are anticipating that it will take us over a week to recover – weather allowing – with most of the problems expected to be picked up as the storms clear up,” said Mangena.
“Our recovery efforts are also thwarted by load-shedding now sitting at higher stages, which has really taken a huge toll on our infrastructure, resources, and revenue.”
The SA Weather Service has warned the heavy rains were likely to continue over the weekend.
