By Murray Williams and Bronwynne Jooste
One of the Western Cape's largest nature reserves has been devastated by fire, while a blaze in Delft has taken the lives of a father and his two-week-old baby.
The baby's mother suffered serious burns and remains in a critical condition after their wendy house caught alight in the early hours of Monday morning, apparently after a candle fell over.
Meanwhile, the blaze which has raged for the past month in Somerset West last night surged towards the town of Grabouw in the Elgin Valley, after cresting the Hottentots Holland mountains, razing large parts of the Hottentots Holland nature reserve.
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At the country club at Eikenhof dam last night, residents watched as the flames burned almost down to the water's edge, and fires burning in the MTO Forestry plantations lit the night sky.
Brian Pickering, owner of Nature Discovery Tours in the Elgin Valley and an honorary ranger, told the Cape Argus this morning: "I've just been up there and the fire has totally devastated the whole area."
"This is the worst ecological disaster here ever. It's going to take years for the fynbos to restore itself," he said.
At the time of going to press this morning, the fire had burned at least 8km into the Elgin Valley.
To the north-east, Cape Nature's Nuweberg offices and residential communes were evacuated last night.
Sources said fire teams had back-burned away from the tourist cottages at the Eikenhof Dam, allowing them to be saved.
Leon Lourens, chief of operations at Nuweberg, said: "We're totally surrounded by live fire lines. Yesterday the fire was being driven by a pumping north-westerly, threatening lives and property."
Around 100 people were being housed in a hall in Grabouw.
Wilfred Solomons, from the city's disaster risk management centre, said hundreds of people had been displaced in shack fires across the city since last Thursday. A man was killed in Du Noon on Sunday morning and other fires in Philippi, Gugulethu and Khayelitsha gutted several shelters.
Back in Somerset West, the fire which has devastated wine estates Lourensford and Vergelegen was still burning high up in the mountains.
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This article was originally published on page 4 of Cape Argus on March 03, 2009
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