School Bus Swept Away as Floods in South Africa Kill at Least 49

Dozens of people were killed in South Africa, including several children whose school bus was swept away by sudden floods, while unusually strong rains, snow and wind struck parts of the country’s oriental CAP province this week.

A slow storm raged in the province widely rural on Monday and Tuesday, drowning the houses and leaving thousands of displaced residents, without water or electricity, according to local officials and the national service to national power.

Authorities were still looking for four children who had been on the school bus on Wednesday. Eleven children had led the bus on Tuesday when it was swept away from a bridge in the city of Mthatha. Three children on the bus were rescued after hung on the trees for hours, while four other adults were killed, local officials said.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Prime Minister of the province, Oscar Mabuyane, said that 49 people had been killed. Although the worst of the weather has passed, they said officials, they fear that the toll can increase because many people remain unable to.

“The disasters struck our province, but we have never known this combination of torrential rain and snow,” said Mabuyane.

This extreme winter weather came like a cold front front across the country, driven by a phenomenon called safe blow. A safe hit is a storm system that comes off the rapidly evolving air currents that generally guide meteorological systems. As a result, it becomes slow and can linger on an area for several days. (A safe blow was Likewise involved In devastating precipitation that flooded the province of Valence, Spain, a deadly effect last fall.)

“This type of anomaly is not abnormal for us, where we have only one event that produces more precipitation and becomes drier longer,” said Tokelo Chiloane, a senior meteorological forecastist at the South African Weather Service.

But the storm of this week has dipped the province with an unusual amount of precipitation. A weather station from the Cap Oriental region recorded 9.4 inches of rain over a period of 24 hours Monday evening in Tuesday. This represents approximately double of the average total precipitation that the province generally obtains from June to August, said Ms. Chiloane.

In Mthatha, hundreds have been moved and are accommodated in community rooms, according to local officials.

The rescue teams were sent surrounding areas to strengthen emergency operations in the most affected places.

Addressing journalists on Wednesday, Mr. Mabuyane said that shortages of critical resources had continued to compromise emergency response capacities in the region.

“This is a question that we have reported whenever we live in disasters,” he said. “We now know, at least in the past two years, that we are a province subject to disasters. The subressource area is the eastern part of the province. ”

Air surveillance and aquatic research teams, including divers, paint the areas affected by floods. In the most affected, the water levels measured almost 10 feet high, flowing on the roofs of large houses, said Mabuyane.

“It’s bad,” he said. “It’s terrible.”

Nazaneen Ghaffar Contributed report from London.