Page 39 - SAPREF 50 year

Water, water everywhere
After four days of heavy rain in late September 1987, the Umlaas Canal was flowing at 35km/h. On 29 September it burst its banks, flooding SAPREF. Soon the pump motors were flooded. The whole refinery was shut down and, for the first time in the history of the refinery, the emergency evacuation alarm had to be sounded. Everybody had to leave the site.
About 900mm of rain had fallen in four days over parts of KwaZulu- Natal and 327 people died in what was then described as the “biggest natural disaster in South Africa”.
The silt-laden water entered the SAPREF Office Block to a depth of about 600mm, and totally flooded the then Buying and Computer departments which were half a floor lower. Both the water and electricity supply to SAPREF were knocked out. The perimeter wall came down in many places. A Columns magazine of the time speaks of “appalling devastation”.
Pat Boddy, a technologist at the time, remembers how, while waiting for the power to come back on and the water supply to
be restored, a call went out: could anyone who knows how to repair a PC or a television set report to the Training Centre. This was teamwork at its best. About ten relatively inexperienced volunteers stripped the
equipment, washed off the mud with water and Teepol, then washed and cleaned the equipment with methanol and left it to dry
in the sun. After reassembly, no-one was more surprised than them to find that all of the devices worked perfectly except for one screen where the plug on the screen had been damaged while taking it apart.
John Thomson, then the Cat Cracker Foreman, recalls, “Some of us had to return
to the site to recover some large gas bottles which were needed at hospitals. We tied the floating bottles together and pulled them as we waded through chest-deep water to the sports field, from where they were dispatched.”
Sister Lynn McClellan remembers having to leave the Office Block, wading through thigh- deep water, and coming back the next day with gumboots and hosepipes to get the mud out of her clinic. “The amazing thing was, the flood brought us all together and we got the place
sorted out. And, there was not one injury of any sort during that time.”
The Managing Director at that time, Andy Warner, summed it up later, saying, “The disastrous flood caused disruption and chaos at the refinery. All SAPREF personnel rallied to the cause and as a result the refinery was back online within a week of water becoming available.”
However, as Rodney Youldon, now Commercial Manager, recalls, “Many reference records and drawings were damaged beyond use, impacting information availability for many years after.”
Pat also remembers how the IS Manager had had to go back to his department and wade through chest-high water to fetch all the back- up disks for safekeeping. He then moved his car to the outside car park, not knowing that the flood water eventually would rise to the point that it entered the car and damaged the disks that had been on the front seat!
The flood waters totally flooded the Buying and Computer departments. The stains on the wall indicate the water level.
Below: The canal which passes the main entrance
to SAPREF overflowed, flooding the road.
SAPREF was flooded and had to shut down for about ten days as a result of torrential rain in late September 1987.
COMMEMORATING 50 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE
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