“We couldn’t just sit and watch,” said Mike Petersen, a third-generation fisherman and skipper based in Margate harbour. “By five in the morning, we had five boats out. People were screaming from guesthouse balconies. The water came so fast, there was no warning. We pulled out 27 people, including a grandmother and two small children. But we also found bodies. That stays with you.” Petersen added that his crew worked for more than 12 hours without rest, ferrying survivors to a community hall turned emergency shelter. The head of the Ugu District Disaster Management Unit, Thandeka Mkhize, confirmed that the official death toll stood at four, with at least eight people still unaccounted for. Paraphrase this paragraph