Cape Town – All three spheres of government have teamed up for a massive manhunt for the arsonists responsible for the devastating fire that tore through 10 000 hectares of vegetation in the Helderberg area, raking up a bill of more than R54 million in damages.
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen, who on Monday by means of a helicopter ride was given a birds-eye view of the destruction, bemoaned what he had seen, saying he would urgently engage the Justice Department “to introduce extra punitive measures to curb such practices” of arson.
Van Rooyen, who had been joined by his provincial counterpart Anton Bredell, as well as mayoral committee for Safety and Security, JP Smith, said “humans are responsible” for the fire.
“Most of the ignition sources clearly show that humans are responsible. We need to focus on that because prevention of such activities is far cheaper than having to manage these fires as we do now. It’s quite expensive; I mean, if you look at the estimated costs, you’d see it doesn’t even include the economic costs of (additional) labour hours and so many other related expenses. So that is why the emphasis will be on how we can prevent these incidents from happening. Now, since this is more, as earlier indicated, attributed to human causes, it will be important for us to work together and intensify that working relationship with all role players, including the province, the municipality and of course, the various community-based organisations in educating our people in preventing such incidents because it is very costly.'
Minister Des van Rooyen visits Strand Fire Station following devastating #SomersetWestFire, which has been largely contained. @4everSiya pic.twitter.com/614WEeuEWA
— Cape Argus (@TheCapeArgus) January 9, 2017 Cogta minister Des van Rooyen inspects #helderbergfire damage with joint chiefs pic.twitter.com/A0OHQodJYT
— Cape Argus (@TheCapeArgus) January 9, 2017
“We are spending a lot of money which could have been utilised to attend to other pressing development needs.”
Smith said the investigation into who caused the fire has intensified.
“We have an investigating team within our Special Investigating Unit (SIU) that is working with police in investigating various bits of evidence that have come forward from witnesses and members of the public, looking at the source of the fire in Grabouw and looking at the two fires started on this side.
“We have not cleared it yet with the mayor (Patricia de Lille), but I am confident she will be able to put up an attractive reward and we’ll employ the intergovernmental mechanisms at our disposal to look at offering an adequate incentive for such information because if good citizenship doesn’t motivate you, maybe the reward will. We need to prevent people from causing such fires because the next time we may not be so lucky.”