Disoriented and in disbelief but alive, a crowd of people who watched their homes wash away amid devastating floods in South Africa's coastal city of Durban queued to register for temporary shelter Wednesday.

"Everything is gone," repeated Sinethemba Duka, 31, over and over, sporting a grey floppy hat and a salmon coloured golf shirt -- having salvaged only a few pieces of clothing.

More than 300 people have been killed since rains, the heaviest in six decades, wreaked havoc on the city and surrounding region at the weekend, destroying homes and infrastructure.

Officials have declared it "one of the worst weather storms in the history of our country".

At the storm's peak, the South African Weather Service said more than 300 mm of rain fell within a 24-hour period in some regions.

Duka and dozens of others crowded around him Wednesday evening, were residents of the Mega Village informal settlement, or shack dwellings,south of Durban's central business district.

Residents said most homes in the area were made of corrugated iron and wooden boards -- not nearly strong enough to withstand rushing waters.

Returning home from work as a street hawker on Monday, Duka said he found himself knee-deep in water. "I was scared," he said.

Mud and rain continued to rise for 30 minutes, forcing him to make a run for it, he said.

"The water then comes on top of my roof... and then the roof goes and then walls fell down," he said, gesturing up and over with his hand.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the city Wednesday pledging aid for those affected.

- 'Not enough space' -

But it was volunteers helping Duka and his neighbours, who included mothers carrying infants, youth and the elderly.

In a pitch dark hall, under a cellphone torch light, one volunteer writes names in a book.

"We are just helping the people because we care," said Mabheki Sokhela, 51, who helped organise temporary shelter at a community hall.

"These are our brothers and sisters"

Sokhela lives in Glebelands hostels -- one of a series of crowded apartment blocks in Umlazi, a township of Durban. He rallied his fellow residents to agree to give shelter to the flood victims in the building.

"We are trying to accommodate these people. There is not enough space," he said.

Many would be sleeping on chairs or on cardboard on the floors of the building, he said.

Volunteers have been desperate to find food, clothes and other supplies for the flood victims.

The destroyed infrastructure from downed mobile networks to collapsed roads and bridges have made accessing supplies a challenge, Sokhela said.

Mudslides have buried parts of highways leading into the city. The main thoroughfare connecting Umlazi to the city centre and, critically, the port was lined with now-twisted and overturned shipping containers swept up by a swollen river.

Sokhela said he was optimistic help would come within days as excavators and other equipment had begun to appear on roads in the area on Wednesday.

The South African Weather Service said the tropical storm had passed, but localised rainfall could be expected before the weekend.

Despite dark clouds still hanging over the city, Sokhela said he couldn't imagine more rain. The hostels in Umlazi were without electricity Wednesday and as night approached, flood victims were left registering in the dark.

If it rains again, Sokhela said, "there can be more people like this."

Toll in South Africa's deadliest floods on record tops 300
Durban, South Africa (AFP) April 13, 2022 - The death toll from devastating floods in and around the South African port city of Durban has risen to 306, the government said Wednesday, after roads and hillsides were washed away as homes collapsed.

The heaviest rains in 60 years pummelled Durban's municipality, known as eThekwini. According to an AFP tally. The storm is the deadliest on record in South Africa.

"By the evening of 13th of April, we have been informed that the death toll from the floods disaster in KZN (KwaZulu-Natal) province has risen to 306 people" Nonala Ndlovu, spokeswoman for the provincial disaster management department said.

Her office said the death toll is "one of the darkest moments in the history" of KZN.

Earlier Wednesday Ndlovu had put the toll at 259.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, has described the floods as a "catastrophe" and a "calamity".

"Bridges have collapsed. Roads have collapsed. People have died," he said, adding that one family lost 10 members.

At least 248 schools have been damaged

"This is a catastrophe of enormous proportions," he said, addressing a local community after inspecting the damage from the floods.

The search for missing persons is still going on, said Ramaphosa, promising to "spare nothing" in dealing with the disaster and offering assistance to the affected.

"This disaster is part of climate change. We no longer can postpone what we need to do... to deal with climate change.

"It is here, and our disaster management capability needs to be at a higher level," said the president.

The United Methodist Church in the township of Clermont was reduced to a pile of rubble. Four children from a local family died when a wall collapsed on them.

Other homes hung precariously to the hillside, miraculously still intact after much of the ground underneath them washed away in mudslides.

- 'It's scary' -

Nokuthula Ntantiso's house survived, but many others in her Umlazi township did not.

"It's scary, because even last night I didn't sleep... because I was wondering if even this (home) that I'm sleeping in can collapse at any time," the 31-year-old call centre operator said.

She tried to go back to work on Wednesday, but turned back at a collapsed bridge.

Meanwhile a dozen crocodiles that went missing from breeding ponds after the heavy rains swamped a crocodile farm near Durban have reportedly been recaptured.

The storm forced sub-Saharan Africa's most important port to halt operations, as a main access road suffered heavy damage.

Shipping containers were tossed about, washed into mountains of metal that rose taller than the elevated highways.

Sections of other roads were washed away, leaving behind gashes in the earth bigger than large trucks.

The main highways were littered with trees and mud so deep that bulldozers were called to help clear it.

Highway barriers lay twisted like pipe cleaners along the side of the roads.

"We see such tragedies hitting other countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe, but now we are the affected ones," Ramaphosa said as he met with grieving families near the ruins of the church.

South Africa's neighbours suffer such natural disasters from tropical storms almost every year, but Africa's most industrialised country has been largely shielded from the storms that form over the Indian Ocean.

These rains were not tropical, but rather caused by a weather system called a cut-off low that brought rain and cold weather to much of the country.

When storms reached the warmer and more humid climate in Durban's KZN province, even more rain poured down.

- 450mm in 48 hours -

"Some parts of KZN have received more than 450 millimetres (18 inches) in the last 48 hours," said Tawana Dipuo, a forecaster at the national weather service. That amounts to nearly half of Durban's annual rainfall of 1,009 mm.

Rain continued in parts of the city on Wednesday afternoon, and a flood warning was issued for the neighbouring province of Eastern Cape.

The storm struck as Durban had barely recovered from deadly riots last July which claimed more than 350 lives, in South Africa's worst unrest since the end of apartheid.

The national police force deployed 300 extra officers to the region, as the air force sent planes to help with the rescue operations.

More than 6,000 homes were damaged.

Floods killed 140 people in 1995.

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