At least 500 killed: Flooding and mudslides in South Africa

More than 500 people are now confirmed to have died in South Africa after torrential rain last week resulted in flooding and mudslides.

A further 63 people remain missing as the South African military is deployed to aid rescue operations and to support those affected.

The economic damage is estimated to be around $400 million with hundreds of properties including homes and schools destroyed leaving many homeless.

A nationwide state of disaster is in effect although the worst of the conditions hit the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province on the southeast coast.

In KZN around 4,000 homes were destroyed as water and electricity supplies remain disconnected a week later.

Some areas are still unreachable after roads and bridges were destroyed.

Elsewhere in the Port of Durban, freight containers at the port were washed away by floodwaters resulting in operations being halted. This has had a knock-on effect on the country’s exports such as fresh citrus fruits which cannot be transported.

A group of crocodiles that were swept away from a farm in Durban have also been captured and returned home.

Military personnel, including electricians and plumbers, are working in the hardest-hit regions while also continuing to search for those that are missing.

Despite the significant amount of rainfall, the cause of this rain was not a tropical storm although South Africa does see cyclones.

The storm was an area of low pressure that became detached from the westerlies, this is a prevailing flow of cold air which move from west to east in the mid-latitudes.

Known as a cut-off low, without a system to drive momentum these storms can stall over a specific area resulting in extreme amounts of rainfall as seen in KwaZulu-Natal.