Bid to have North Coast declared a disaster area

Adrian Barnes, Chief Fire Officer at the municipality and co-ordinator of a task team set up to assess the damage, said the municipality\'s executive committee had met recently to discuss a report, which estimated the damage caused in the municipality to be in excess of R1bn. Bua News reports that the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality in conjunction with several stakeholders have set up a Disaster Management Joint Operations Committee. The committee consists of Metro Police, South African Police Services, Emergency Services, Electricity, Water, Roads, Engineering and Parks and Recreation. Full report on the IoL site Full Bua News report Read another report on the SABC News site

The spectacular damage to the coast may serve as a salutary wake-up call to local developers and city officials, that sea level and climate change warnings should not be sniffed at, says a report in The Mercury. Debra Roberts, head of the eThekwini Environmental Management Department, while steering away from alarmist predictions, said that some new development proposals on the KZN coast could be ‘insane’. Speaking at a climate change seminar at the Durban Natural Science Museum, Roberts emphasised that predicting climate-related sea level rise was extremely tricky because of the paucity of data and the level of scientific complexity. But, responding to a question about the need to consider the dissenting views of some scientists on the issue of climate change, Roberts said there were people in the world, who still believed the world was flat. According to an SABC News report, the KZN Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs says it intends reviewing the issuing of permits for the building of residential and business structures along the coastline. Full report in The Mercury Full SABC News report