Wind wreckage mostly due to shoddy building

Blasting winds hit 128km/h in the west of the province at the weekend and homeowners are going to have to do more to protect their properties from regular prefrontal storms.

Eastern Cape SA Weather Services spokesperson Garth Sampson, who collects photographs of wind wreckage from the public and media, said on Friday: “You can see immediately that building regulations have not been adhered to.

“Ninety percent of the damage is a result of wear and tear, and of that, 90% is because of shoddy building.”

He listed common building problems and dangerous cheats as:

• Houses, many RDP homes, built with one part cement to 16 — or even 30 — parts sand. “These houses just blow over.”

• Roofs not securely battened down, or using poor quality roofing screws which rust away;

• Gutters not properly secured or kept clear of debris;

• Old trees with deadwood left standing close to houses; and

• A general lack of maintenance.

In an overview of wind storms, he said the Eastern Cape interior could expect gales if an approaching cold front from Cape Town encountered a weak high pressure system in the South African interior.

The front “brushed it aside” and the province’s interior would be battered by gales.

Mountains along the escarpment also channelled storm winds, which at the weekend saw wind speeds of 128km/h in the north-western part of the province in the Sneeuberg range, and 103km/h at Dohne outside Stutterheim in the Amatola mountains.

Towns in the foothills of the escarpment also took a beating on Thursday, with top wind speeds of 96.1km/h in Graaff-Reinet, 96.5km/h in  Fort Beaufort,  91km/h in Lady Grey and 86.8km/h in Bhisho.

The wind also barrelled through the Amatola foothill town of Middleton at 86kmh and in Komani reached 84km/h.

At that moment on Thursday, while homes and farming infrastructure were being destroyed in the interior, there was a light 20km/h wind in East London, according to Sampson.

However, Uitenhage, in the foothills of the Cockscombe range, was hit by a 91km/h wind.

Sampson said the SAWS rule-of-thumb was that a cold front hitting Cape Town from the west would likely slide off the continent, and weaken by the time it reached the province, as happened for coastal-dwellers on Thursday.

But when the front came into the Cape peninsular from the south, then it was likely to roll powerfully  into the Eastern Cape, bringing rain.

Sarah Baartman district municipality operations manager Kanyisa Majokweni said they had received a number of  reports of wind damage to homes in Makhanda, Graaff-Reinet, and Jansenville.

The Covid-19 testing station tent on the N2 near Stormsriver was “blown away”,  he said.

He said wind damage at Pearston, in the foothills of the Bankberg, had become so bad that the municipality trained 15 local youths to become builders.

He said the reports that came in this week were about roofs or portions being blown off, walls being knocked down, fires breaking out in shacks, and an electrical pole being bent.

Agri-EC president Dougie Stern said the wind was the worst he had experienced in 50 years of farming.

Farmers in the Camdeboo told the Dispatch sheds were damaged, windmills were blown over, a slate roof of a farmhouse was lifted, and one farmhouse, Avonleigh, had its entire roof blown off and core walls shaken and cracked, leaving the old Karoo building a ruin.