“All fires are
out,” the City of Cape Town said Saturday on its Twitter account. “Any
flare-ups will be dealt with by local area stations. Cape Point will be
monitored by South Africa National Parks,” the government parks agency, it
said. The blazes, which began on March
1, led to the evacuation of a number of households and old-age homes and had
posed a threat to some wine farms in the Constantia valley.
As the cause of
loss is being examined, it is reported
that a helicopter pilot was killed on Sunday after being forced to make
a crash landing while fighting the blaze. According to eNCA, he was one of the
country's top helicopter rescue pilots.
It is stated that there was a
fire flareup in the Cape Point area and that the crash took place at around
11:00. Initial reports suggested that the pilot was injured, and that an air
ambulance was dispatched to take him to hospital. Unfortunately, the pilot
succumbed to his wounds and was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
Besides the sad
loss of life, and to that of many a
property - Data center company Teraco says fires have hit its Cape Town
facility but that the damage is contained.
Africa’s only vendor neutral data centre, Teraco, is quoted as
saying its Cape Town data center is
currently running on generator power after a fire affected the Great Westerford
Building in Rondebosch, Cape Town. It’s
building had been evacuated and the fire contained. Teraco serves more
than 170 clients, who specialise in the likes of telecoms, outsourcing,
content, enterprise and financial services.
The
fires may be out in Cape Town but a theory about the cause of blaze is kindling
debate. According to officials in South Africa’s second-largest city, the fire
may have resulted from a cigarette butt cast from the window of a car along a
highway in Muizenberg, a suburb that lies to the city’s
southeast. From there the burn spread westward across the peninsula atop which
Cape Town sits. I’m afraid negligence by
people doesn’t help,” an alderman who
heads the city’s public safety committee, told eNews Channel Africa.
Though Smith cited
a text from someone who claimed to have witnessed the butt tossing, that hasn’t
persuaded some locals, who took to Twitter over the weekend to voice their
skepticism. “This story about a cigarette starting the fire on Boyes Drive is
the biggest joke of the year,” tweeted one; “A cigarette can’t start a fire,”
wrote another. As part of the study, researchers lit 75 cigarettes and tossed
them one at a time them into grass on the side of a road when the wind whipped
at 40 kilometers per hours (24.8 mph), the humidity hovered at 14% and the
herbage had a moisture content of 12% of oven-dry weight. Three of the butts
ignited the bush sufficient to force firefighters, who participated in the
trial, to extinguish the flames. The
city has called in the services of one of South Africa’s leading forensic
investigators, Dr David Klatzow, to look into how the fires originated.
Officials
say they will investigate the cause of the blazes, which hospitalized one
firefighter, burned 5,550 hectares (12,355 acres), damaged 13 structures and
forced the evacuation of at least 500 people. The fire has cost the region about about $500,000 (US)
in firefighting efforts. The pilot who died in a helicopter
crash while dousing fire at Cape Point this morning has been identified as
Willem Hendrik “Bees” Marais, City Press reports. Marais attempted a forced
landing with his Bell 212 Huey near Olifantsbos in the Table Mountain National
Park at 11:30 when he crashed.
As a freelance
flyer for poverty relief programme Working On Fire, Marais worked tirelessly
this week battling the blaze that erupted last Sunday, scooping water and
dropping it on flames with a 1000 liter bambi-bucket attached to his chopper.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
9th Mar 2015.
News collated from various sources on the net; photos credit : guardian.co.uk.
