The World - News from Oct. 4, 1987

South African officials put the death toll from floods in Natal province at 174, with another 86 persons missing. Hospitals in Durban, on the country’s waterlogged east coast, limited surgery to emergencies, and some tourist hotels put private bathrooms off-limits to preserve dwindling fresh-water supplies. Social workers estimated that more than half a million black and Asian squatters had their shelters in illegal settlements on Durban’s fringes. The five-day downpour, which caused the flooding, wrecked all four of the aqueducts supplying water to the metropolitan area’s 1 million residents.