Flood-hit farmers face tough season

Farmers in the flood-ravaged Winelands are engaged in a race against time to repair key roads and bridges - without which they will face massive hardships in harvesting their crops.

De Doorns in the Hex River Valley has been particularly hard-hit, with more than a dozen bridges washed away or severely damaged - bridges which link vineyards with cellars and co-operatives where the grapes will be processed.

In the valley on Wednesday a small battalion of earthmovers and digger-loaders were crawling the length of the riverbed heaving mud, dirt and stone to reform the river's natural banks, while heavy-duty trucks worked in relays to dump stone from a nearby quarry into the gaping chasms left where bridges had stood.

'As far as the eye can see we have machinery moving to fill the bridges'
Boetie Kriel, a farmer and head of the Hex River Table Grape Association, said: "Yes, farmers are worried. There are big losses of land which has been washed away. We hope to have all but one bridge repaired in time for the harvest. The bridges will not be repaired properly, but we will place gravel on top of earth to make it possible for trucks to cross."

"As far as the eye can see we have machinery moving to fill the bridges," he reported.

Agriculture MEC Kobus Dowry has suggested that the army's engineers may be asked to assist with the construction of temporary bridges.

He estimated that between 45 and 60 hectares of vineyards had been lost.

Premier Lynne Brown said on Thursday the provincial government was awaiting reports from municipalities on whether their areas should be declared disaster areas.

'There is something wrong, and that something can be ascribed to global warming'
She said around 100 people were housed in community halls in the two worst-affected areas - De Doorns and the Montagu-Robertson area. She commended the municipalities' disaster management officials for their apparent state of readiness, which had seen much repair work completed already.

Dowry said in an interview with the Cape Argus on Wednesday that global warming had caused an estimated R1-billion of damage in the Western Cape, and "drastic action" was needed to assist current and future victims of flooding.

"There is something wrong, and that something can be ascribed to global warming."

Dowry said there was no historical pattern of the "totally out of season" rains that lashed the province to the extent it did last week, and added that farmers had told him this was "the first time in their lives they saw something like this".

Only during the past few years have uncharacteristically heavy November rains started falling "on an almost regular basis", Dowry said.

"When you look at this kind of disaster, it is very clear that global warming has something to do with it."

Dowry pleaded for the government to put in place a permanent fund to enable authorities to immediately assist victims when future disaster struck, because "we go through this process every time and it is putting us back years".

A total damage quantification has not yet been made, but Thursday is the deadline for farmers to submit damage assessments to the provincial government. Sources have indicated that R1-billion would not be an unrealistic price-tag for damage inflicted across the province, but official figures will only be available by tomorrow at the earliest.

A provincial official said mopping up work was still continuing in all the municipalities affected by the flooding, but added that damage assessment was being hampered by mud, debris and water.

The Cape Winelands and Overberg municipalities were the hardest hit areas with extensive crop damage and loss of livestock, the official said.