A four-year-old girl has died and 10,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes after fires swept through a town in South Africa.
The young girl was found dead by her father on Thursday morning in tourist destination Knysna on the country’s popular south coast Garden Route.
The fires were sparked by lightning and fanned by high winds after a storm hit the region around Cape Town on Wednesday, battering the coast with big waves and heavy rain.
Flames raged through dozens of homes in Knysna, leaving four people dead.
According to the local newspaper the Knysna-Plett Herald, patients who were evacuated from the local hospital were being cared for in the squash courts, clubhouse and other facilities of a sports centre.
South Africa’s parliament said in a statement: “It is mostly the poorest sections of our society that usually bear the brunt of natural calamities, such as severe weather conditions, due to the conditions under which they live.”
Additional reporting by Associated Press.
