THE Kloof and Highway SPCA faces a dire food shortage as inclement weather wreaked havoc on their facilities, leading to an urgent appeal for assistance. The organisation was forced to keep its doors closed yesterday while staff scrambled to drain water from the buildings and salvage what they could from the wreckage.
Manager Barbara Patrick reported the extent of the damage, stating, “All our animals are safe, so we are really happy about that. However, our main offices and our clinic were almost knee deep in water.” The facility lost power and faced communication issues as phone lines went down during the storm, complicating recovery efforts further. Patrick said the team spent the day cleaning up as much as possible but were grateful that all the animals were accounted for and safe.
“Our little education centre in the kennel area was squashed by a big tree that's come down. All our animals are safe, so we are really happy about that. But our main offices and our clinic were almost knee deep in water.”
Patrick said they also needed sand bags to prevent further flooding.
By late yesterday afternoon the full extent of the damage was still unknown .
“We’re worried about more bad weather and more rain. Our food has been damaged, our donated goods have been damaged. So anything that anybody can do to help us would really be appreciated,” said Patrick.
She said that they also needed anything that they could sell in their charity shops, like homeware, books and clothes.
“We've got quite a few leaks in our charity shops so we need stock. Things have been damaged in our attic, which is our home store, our bookstore and our clothing store. I can't give you the value of it, but it's valuable to us.”
She also appealed for help to get them up and running again. “If there's an electrician out there who can come and look. But I think there's so many people that are worse off than us. So for the moment, we're just staying closed and we're just getting sorted.”
The Centre for Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) also lost all its food in the storm and made an urgent appeal for a container or shed in which they could store supplies.
Operations manager Clint Halkett-Siddall said that they were still trying to clean up from the last storm when this one started. They’ve appealed for help in the form of volunteers or goods.
“We’ve had a bit of flooding in our enclosures, but we haven't had any casualties. We've just been working quite hard trying to pump the water out of the enclosures and make sure that we get the animals to higher ground. Last week, our antelope enclosure and our tortoise ICU flooded, but we managed to get the animals to higher ground.”
Halkett-Siddall said that anyone who wanted to assist CROW could find a wishlist on their website, while those keen to volunteer could send them an email at
He said those who were keen to volunteer at CROW could email them at crowkzn.co.za.