Unidentified occupants in two separate vehicles made a daring escape, getting out when their vehicles got trapped and eventually submerged in the flooded Fort Street subway near Centlec in Bloemfontein early on Monday, 8 April. The subway, of which the drainage system is dysfunctional, got flooded again following torrential rain which began late on Saturday.
The drivers of the two cars risked driving through the subway, underestimating the depth of water at the time. The two vehicles became submerged to a point that it was difficult to positively identify the type of model.
By the time the Mangaung Metro Municipality rescue team conducted a search to ascertain no persons had drowned, water was chest-height in the subway and the level of water continued rising with the heavy downpour.
A rescue swimmer, Juan van Vuuren, navigated through the rising water to conduct a search to ensure that there was nobody trapped inside the silver car that was submerged.
Braam van Zyl, Mangaung fire chief, said there was nobody inside the vehicles.
Residents are accustomed to the disaster of the subway flooding, sometimes paying heavy costs and risking their lives, ignoring the existing danger to drive through the flooded subway.
In 2019 and 2021, a state ambulance and Interstate bus got trapped in the subway, days apart.
One case vividly remembered involves the incident on 4 February 2021, when a medical doctor and his passenger were rescued by members of the Bloemfontein Fire Department after the doctor’s four-wheel drive Toyota Hilux became trapped in the middle of stagnant water in the subway. He too seemed to have under estimated the depth of water.
Also, an unidentified woman narrowly escaped death – being rescued from her silver car, which got trapped in the subway.
The latest heavy rains wreaked havoc in the city, with several roads that were under water, exposing drainage problems around the city.
The subway in Fort Street, on one of the important roadways into the Bloemfontein city, is highly prone to flooding whenever it rains.
The problem of flooding continues unabated, with the municipality that seems unable to find a solution despite the problem detected after completion of the upgrading of the bridge in 2008.
The subway was upgraded to enable freight trucks to also drive through.
The upgrade was done as part of the Mangaung Activity Corridor Project, reportedly involving R46 million. The corridor was developed to alleviate transport congestion with the view of promoting local economic activity between Bloemfontein’s CBD and the rest of Mangaung.
It included the provision of improved public transport facilities and a safe pedestrian environment, as well as the development of business nodes.
Recently, young children were being spotted swimming in the dirty water in the subway, cooling off during a heatwave.
In a more chilling addition to the subway’s tale, a deceased person’s body was found floating in stagnant water in the subway on 31 December last year.
