South Africa declared 33 municipalities in eight of its nine provinces disaster areas last week after torrential rains since mid-December damaged thousands of homes and flooded farm lands.

"An estimation is that plus-minus 20,000 people are affected by this natural disaster. This number might grow as we get different provincial reports," said social development ministry spokesman Abram Phahlamohlaka.

An extra 20 million rand (2.1 million euros, 2.8 million dollars) is needed to provide three months of basic aid such as food parcels to victims, with the government appealing to civil society, business and the public to assist.

"As a starter we need at least 20 million," said Phahlamohlaka, adding that most of the affected were in poor communities.

An interim report by the ministry at the weekend upped the death toll to 123, with 88 of the fatalities in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal.

At the weekend, Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka said the flood damage was estimated at 356 million rand so far, with reports from some provinces yet to come in.

earlier related report
2010 'one of worst' years for disasters: UN
Geneva (AFP) Jan 24, 2011 - 2010 was one of the worst years on record for natural disasters over the past two decades, leaving nearly 297,000 people dead, research for the United Nations showed on Monday.

The devastating earthquake in Haiti a year ago accounted for about two thirds of the toll, killing more than 222,500 people, according to the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

The CRED found that the summer heatwave in Russia was the second deadliest disaster of the year, leaving 55,736 people dead according to figures it compiled from insurers and media reports of official sources.

The year was "one of the worst in decades in terms of the number of people killed and in terms of economic losses," Margareta Wahlstroem, UN special representative for disaster risk reduction, told journalists.

"These figures are bad, but could be seen as benign in years to come," she said, pointing to the impact of unplanned growth of urban areas, environmental degradation and climate change.

The economic cost of the 373 major disasters recorded in 2010 reached 109 billion dollars, headed by an estimated 30 billion dollars in damage caused by the powerful earthquake that struck Chile in February.

The earthquake unleashed a tsunami that swept away villages and claimed most of the 521 dead.

Summer floods and landslides in China caused an estimated 18 billion dollars in damage, while floods in Pakistan cost 9.5 billion dollars, according to the CRED's annual study.

Although impoverished Haiti is still struggling to recover from the quake that devastated much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, it ranked lower down the global economic scale with an estimated eight billion dollars in losses.

Asians accounted for 89 percent of the 207 million people affected by disasters worldwide last year, the CRED said.

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