Su-Marie H�rstmann
A car is washed away by floodwaters in Hoedspruit.
A woman with her child strapped to her back with a black refuse bag clung to a tree as raging floodwaters swept by until a rescue team airlifted them to safety.
Two other adults were rescued with the mother and child from the tree on a citrus farm near the Blyde River.
They were among 135 people the air force and police rescue units plucked from life-threatening situations during the Mpumalanga and Limpopo floods over the past two days.
Police used armoured Casspirs to reach those who were trapped.
Ordinary civilians used private helicopters and specialised off-road vehicles to rescue guests stranded at game lodges in and around the Kruger National Park.
But the rescue of the mother and child was not without danger and left a flight engineer from Hoedspruit’s 19 Squadron seriously injured when he fractured his leg trying to rescue them.
Samuel Malatjie of Phiva village in Nkomazi was rescued from an overflowing river yesterday after sitting on a broken tree branch for five hours. Picture: Lwazi Raul/AENS
PHOTOS BY: Lwazi Raul/AENS
The injury forced the pilot of the Oryx helicopter to abandon the rescue and winch the injured sergeant-major on board and fly him to hospital.
The woman and her child, according to an air force spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Piet Paxton, were later rescued by the crew of a police helicopter.
Paxton described the rescue mission as intense and said pilots and aircrew went to the aid of 53 primary school children trapped at their schools in the Acornhoek area of Bushbuckridge.
A spokeswoman for the Limpopo Disaster Management Centre, Tseng Diale, said three people were admitted to the Hoedspruit Military Hospital including the air force crewman. No deaths had been reported.
SA National Parks (SANParks) said no serious damage had been reported at Skukuza, but that Talamati, Buyamiti and Shimuwini camps were cut off and Balule camp was flooded. The staff village, camp site, swimming pool and filling station at Letaba were also swamped.
SANparks chief executive David Mabunda said that of the 1 800 guests in the Kruger National Park, 80, including 10 staff members, had been evacuated.
A mother and her child talk to SAPS members after being rescued from floodwaters by the helicopter team in Zandspruit.
Meanwhile, the town of Hoedspruit remains cut off with the R527 road, which links Hoedspruit and Jonkmanspruit, still closed to traffic yesterday. Heavy floods partly washed away the bridge on the small Sandspruit river near the Zandspruit area.
Fourteen families had to be relocated in the rural Nkomazi area.
According to the Mpumalanga provincial department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs, 30 houses were damaged in a number of villages south of Malalane.
