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Time to tackle the flood challenge

WHEN the hail hit Joburg last week, I was out in it, feeling pretty helpless and exposed. The thwack-thwack-thwack of ping-pong-ball sized hailstones hitting the car and smashing on the windscreen was rather scary.

I passed a shopping mall on route; the drainage hole from the parking lot was shooting water opaque with dirt onto passing cars, blinding you for a second as you drove by. Just beyond the road was sheeted in a river of red, thanks to a development which has bulldozered all trees and shrubs, leaving the iron-rich topsoil unprotected.

A day later, I was worrying about my mom, living close to the flooding in 'Toti… The vids from eThekwini made my jaw drop – cars floating away and smashing into each other, desperate rescues from minibuses, scenes more reminiscent of hurricane territory than South Africa. Loss, damage, cost. And worse: the death toll is eight as I write, with a good chance of rising.

This is the new normal. ClimateWise has said that the “frequency of weather-related catastrophes such as floods, windstorms and droughts have increased six-fold since the 1950s”.

I worked in the short-term insurance industry for eight years, way back when; their business is risk assessment, and they’re pretty hard-headed about it, especially the global reinsurers, the insurers who insure the insurers (reinsurers “share risk by purchasing insurance policies from other insurers to limit the total loss the original insurer would experience in case of disaster”).

There’s no room for ideology, agendas or sentiment.

So when I first saw, more than two decades back, that big reinsurance companies had been getting a bit agitated about climate change, I paid attention.

Those early years of democracy were a particularly exciting time for South Africa, but I’d like to believe that even then, scientists and people in relevant fields like reinsurance were at least trying to alert our local and national authorities to the hazards ahead.

Perhaps back then it all seemed rather remote in time, and there were other urgent priorities; but in the last few years, it’s all got rather real, hasn’t it?

We can’t afford the human or economic costs. eThekwini is still recovering from floods last year, as it reels from the battering last week; Gauteng, too, has sustained serious financial losses (R700m in 2016, apparently).

Such blows to the economy can be weathered (forgive the pun) if they’re infrequent, but according to Susan Walls of the South African Insurance Association (SAIA), the association’s members “have recorded increases in flood and drought claims”.

The “intersection between rapid urbanisation, poor infrastructure and service delivery” means that extreme weather events and disasters in the developing world “tend to result in greater numbers of fatalities and affected people than disasters in the developed world”, according to a Wits Msc dissertation.

So what should we be doing?

First up, we need government at all levels to acknowledge the great urgency of accepting and confronting the changes that are here already, and those that are looming.

Really, it’s frustrating to watch (here and in the USA and other parts of the world) the jockeying for power and backstabbing and politicking; it all looks frighteningly petty in the light of the huge challenges we face as a species.

Tackle the immediate tasks

Next, tackle the immediate tasks that make things worse in the here and now; for example: root out the aliens that suck up water and increase fire hazards (“…invasive species in our primary catchments in Cape Town are using as much water as the entire Wemmershoek Dam," says ecologist Jasper Slingsby); fix the leaks that we’ve known for years cost us billions annually, and, even more importantly, reduce water security; clear storm-water drains. Do the maintenance, for heaven’s sake, it’s Stewardship 101!

And then plan. Plan for the reality of the immediate and not-so-immediate future. For example, don’t build on flood plains; build for resilience; reduce paving and surfaces that are fodder for flash-floods; improve bridges; build storm barriers.

Rehabilitate reed beds, estuaries and riversides, to slow flooding and retain water in soil. (Did you know that the now flood-prone eThekwini coastline incorporates 16 estuaries, 58% of them highly degraded? Fix them for flood mitigation!

Combine resources like the SA Weather Service with communication technology from Twitter to radio broadcasters to mobile phones, to warn people of extreme events before they hit us; teach preparedness constantly via schools and workplaces – just as every LA resident is prepared for earthquakes, everyone in at-risk parts of South Africa should know both the facts (for example, just 15cm of flowing water can move a Toyota Yaris, or 45cm for an SUV) and what to do when trapped in a flooding house or car, or under threat from fire. Schools, malls, cities should all have evacuation plans.

You think government is up to this? No? Okay, then we need to take responsibility. We need to do as much of this as we can ourselves. Businesses, radio stations, TV, newspapers and online publications, places where the public are exposed to info (churches, shopping malls and the like), create posters and graphics that share safety info.

Expose threats (like building on flood plains, for example); campaign long and loud for better planning, maintenance, evacuation plansand the like. It’s our lives, our assets, our economy, our country at risk.

  • Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.

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