Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has signed a Major Incident Declaration, which unlocks additional resources and relief measures.
At least 11 people have died in the Western Cape and approximately 15 000 people are without power as a result of strong winds and heavy rain that led to flooding over the long weekend.
In a statement, the mayor acknowledged that many areas were significantly affected, but noted that the Helderberg area was particularly hard hit.
Extensive mudslides were reported around Sir Lowry’s Pass Village.
Hill-Lewis says the City is working around the clock to assist communities:
“This declaration will allow for the unlocking of the additional resources and relief measures to deal with incident impacts. I’m extremely grateful to City teams who are working around the clock in assisting communities impacted by weekend’s the storm and to all those charities who so generously helping out”.
Hill-Lewis also had a message for the families of the eleven known victims of the storm – eight of whom were Cape Town residents:
“My heartfelt condolences to the families who have lost their love ones through the various tragic incidents that took place during the storm. We keep those families in our prayers and thoughts.”
Meanwhile, the Western Cape Government is working around the clock to ensure that schools and clinics impacted by the recent storm are operating normally.
More than 200 schools in the province have indicated that they had been impacted by the inclement weather.
Of that, 16 were closed as result of the heavy rains that triggered floods.
Some public health facilities were shut down, as the routes to the places of work were inaccessible, while others operated at reduced capacity.
The Head of Disaster Medicine, Dr Wayne Smith says they’ve activated a response plan.
“As we running now through this more of a  recovery phase. Our aim is to get our staff into our facilities and open the facilities back to normally for our patients. But there’s been some problems in trying to do that. We looking at an ability to get staff to get to an alternative facility if they can’t get to their normal facility”.
