Cape Town – The body of a woman that had been trapped under the rubble since Monday last week in Durban North has reportedly been found.
According to Times Live, a wall collapsed on the woman’s quarters during a downpour.
The police search and rescue teams had been battling to reach her manually.
Gift of the Givers, a local humanitarian agency, joined in and sought assistance for a Bobcat machinery to retrieve the body on Thursday.
“We are urgently looking for a [Bobcat] to excavate a deceased individual who passed on in Durban North when the wall of the house collapsed. Search and rescue teams have been battling since Monday night to retrieve the body,” wrote the agency in a tweet.
Soon after, a man came to the rescue with the Bobcat machinery.
“We thank the generous gentleman who came to our aid upon requesting assistance for a Bobcat to retrieve a deceased’s body. May he be blessed for his kindness. We are on the verge of finding the body. SAPS K9 Search and Rescue teams were able to discover personal items,” the agency wrote in a follow-up tweet.
East Coast Radio reported on Wednesday that: “After days of painstaking digging through mud and rubble, search and rescue teams at a home in Durban North have finally found the body of a helper who’s been buried underneath.”
The province has recently been hard hit by floods where at least 448 people have now died and 40 000 are homeless.
A state of Disaster has been declared by President Cyril Ramaphosa, and top ministers have been dispatched to the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province for oversite.
South Africa’s military has also deployed 400 of the 10 000 troops earmarked for emergency, relief and reconstruction operations in flood-stricken areas.
Joint civilian and military search teams continue to recover corpses from the debris more than a week after the disaster struck.
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Picture: Twitter/@GiftoftheGivers
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Compiled by Sinothando Siyolo
Additional reporting by AFP
