Lindsay Dentlinger and Dianne Hawker
27 December 2007
Cape Town — Several farmers in the Laingsburg area have had their access to the town cut off following Monday's flash floods which burst the banks of the Buffels River, while in a separate storm-related incident elsewhere in the Western Cape a man has died.
Johannas Samson, 64, was killed on Rondekop farm near Piketberg on Monday when a sheet of corrugated iron was lifted off a roof in a rainstorm.
Police Inspector Leonard Monk said Samson had been walking outside when the weather changed suddenly and strong winds dislodged a number of sheets of corrugated iron from an old roof, one of which hit Samson.
A secondary road, Moordenaars Karoo, was washed away in parts and had to be closed, while the Meiringspoort road on the N12, 50km from Oudtshoorn, has been temporarily closed as a result of water flowing over the road.
The N1 has been reopened to traffic after flood waters rose over the N1 bridge on Monday night.
The Disaster Risk Management unit of the Central Karoo District Municipality said yesterday that the situation was under control and that there had been no loss of life or damage to property in the town.
Monk said shops and homes in Piketberg had been flooded after the short but heavy rainfall, which lasted about an hour.
"This happened just before Christmas. Many shops and houses were flooded. Police, municipal officials and traffic officers helped members of the public to clean up. There were also trees in the roads," he said.
But weather has improved since the storm.
In Laingsburg, the Buffels River continues to flow but at lower levels than it has in previous days. Although more rain is forecast, it is not expected to be as severe.
The head of Disaster Risk Management of the Central Karoo District municipality, Hein Rust, said the Buffels River was expected to cope with inflow from the smaller rivers.
He said the damage on farms still had to be assessed, but farmers in the lower Laingsburg areas had mostly lost lucerne and had trees damaged.
Other farmers along the Moordenaars Karoo way, most of them sheep farmers, had been cut off from the town as a result of road damage, but Rust said there had been no reports of major damage to property.
In a large flood in 1982, more than 100 people died and only 21 houses were left standing in Laingsburg.
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