Storms smash six homes in Nqamakwe village as relief teams move in
Amathole and Mnquma municipal officials are due in New Look Village to count the damage and start helping the families whose houses were hit.
Six households in New Look Village, outside Nqamakwe, are picking through storm damage after a heavy downpour swept the area on Thursday afternoon.
Several houses in the village were damaged when the storms moved through, with roughly half a dozen homes counted among those hit, according to reporting by eNCA.
Nobody was hurt. No deaths have been reported either, which in a storm of this kind is the first thing a community checks and the first thing it can be grateful for.
By Friday morning the work of counting what was lost had not yet begun in earnest. Officials from two municipalities, Amathole District and Mnquma Local, are due to travel to the affected houses to look at what the weather did and to work out how much repair the damage needs.
That site visit is also the start of the relief effort. The same officials are expected to help the residents whose homes were struck, and the assessment will shape what kind of help reaches New Look Village and how soon.
For the families involved, the next few days are about roofs, walls and the ordinary possessions a storm can ruin in an hour. In rural parts of the Eastern Cape, a damaged house is not only a building problem. It is a question of where a family sleeps while repairs are arranged, and how quickly materials and labour can be found in a village some distance from the nearest town.
Nqamakwe sits in Mnquma, one of the local municipalities under Amathole District, and the storm that hit on Thursday was the kind that arrives fast and leaves a mark on the poorest-built structures first. The fact that six homes were affected, rather than sixty, is a mercy. It does not make the loss smaller for the six.
The Enquirer has reported what is known and no more. Nobody has put a rand figure on the damage, no injury list exists, and the municipal assessment that will pin down the extent of the harm is still to be done. Readers should treat the count of around six homes as an early estimate from the reporting on the ground, not a final tally.
What is clear is the sequence. The storm came on Thursday. The homes were damaged. The municipalities are moving. The relief, if it comes, will follow the assessment.
Residents of New Look Village and the wider Nqamakwe area who suffered damage will be watching whether that sequence holds, because in this country the gap between a disaster team’s visit and a family’s repaired roof is where promises tend to slow down. The Enquirer will keep following the municipal assessment and the relief that follows it.
Source: eNCA, Storms leave trail of damage in Nqamakwe homes
