Call to improve early weather warnings

Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Bernice Swarts said that the South African Weather Service (Saws) needs to do better to improve the capacity of its early warning systems.

Swarts was speaking at the 3-day national consultative workshop “Early Warnings for All” in Pretoria on Monday, attended by the Saws officials and a wide range of other stakeholders.

She said coastal provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape were hard hit by unfavourable weather conditions, causing mass destruction and loss of lives. “There are few gaps here and there which explain why we have an unacceptably high number of fatalities whenever mother nature unleashes her outbursts of meteorological wrath on hot spots such as the coastal provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape,” said Swarts.

The 2021 floods that swept parts of KZN resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives and left tens of thousands displaced, causing the destruction of homes and critical infrastructure.

In June, a devastating storm hit oThongathi, leaving 12 dead and over 1 200 homeless. It was reported that the cost to repair the infrastructure damaged by the storm was close to R490 million.

Swarts said a key part of building climate resilience is to set up “early-warning” systems so that communities can prepare for disasters.

“In our country, the Saws, working hand-in-glove with key stakeholders such as disaster management authorities, is entrusted with taking the lead in the roll-out of early warning systems as part of the ‘Early Warnings for All’ initiative.

“These include 12 meteorological Radio Detection and Ranging (Radar) systems, nearly 250 automatic weather stations, two climate stations, over 1 200 manual rainfall stations, 153 automatic rainfall stations, 13 sea surface temperature stations and 47 weather buoys in the South Atlantic and South Indian Ocean,” she said.

Professor Dewald van Niekerk, director of African Centre for Disaster Studies at the North-West University, believes that the early warning systems won’t save lives, only the actions linked to the warning will.

“I believe we are not doing a bad job at impact-based forecasting through Saws. However, the warning is only as good as the understanding of, and early action linked to, the warning. There is a significant mismatch as to the sending of the early warning message and uptake in communities.

“We need a multi-hazard early warning system in South Africa that will combine efforts across sectors and departments and provide us a much better idea of the ‘bigger picture’ and interconnectedness of compounding hazards,” Van Niekerk said.

Climate change, food systems and health Professor Tafadzwa Mabhaudhi at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the SAWS needs to fully implement the common alerts protocol (CAP), to enable improved communication and dissemination of warnings to vulnerable and exposed people using all available media channels in local languages.

“The call by the deputy minister is welcome and aligns with the global call to ensure early warnings for all.

While the Saws has made significant strides in terms of monitoring, observation and generating early warnings, there are still significant gaps regarding effective communication and effective response capabilities,” he said.

Sithembiso Moyo from oThongathi described the launch as “good news” as it would help save peoples’ lives.

“Maybe if we had been warned earlier about the storm that ravaged our homes, some lives would have been saved.”

The Mercury