Cape Town - The drought and expected dry months ahead threaten the fire-fighting capabilities of rescue teams who have had to battle more than 2 000 veld fires over the past two months already.
The wildfire season has started early this year with rescue teams already dispatched to battle more than 2 00 fires in the Western Cape over the past two months.
“There is a very close relationship between water scarcity and the drought we are seeing and the fires we are seeing as well,” said Rodney Eksteen, assistant director of Western Cape Fire Rescue Services.
For years, Cape Town has been caught in a dry spell thanks to below-average rainfalls associated with El Nino, leading to the highest level of water restrictions and some of the lowest average dam levels since 2012.
Many dams in the Western Cape are currently below 55 percent capacity, with water levels often steadily decreasing each week.
Since the beginning of October, there have been over 2 400 vegetation fires in the area of the City of Cape Town alone.
Veld fires have broken out at Berg River Dam and Wemmershoek in Stellenbosch, Koringberg near Porterville, Langvlei, Verkyker in Tulbagh, Red Hill near Simon’s Town in the Table Mountain National Park and the Wolfgat Nature Reserve near Mitchells Plain.
In the 2015 wildfires that ravaged the Southern Peninsula, the Table Mountain National Park lost about R6-million in infrastructure.
Most recently, over 120 firefighters fought to extinguish the Banhoek fire which burnt about 1 700ha in the Cape Winelands district municipality in the last week.
Henning Grobler, a meteorologist at the SA Weather Service, said Cape Town residents could expect a normal, warm summer season with an average monthly rainfall of 15mm at most.
While drought conditions will not lead to more wildfires, they will “contribute to the severity of rate of spread of many of them”, according to Theo Layne, spokesperson for the City of Cape Town Fire and Rescue Service.
“Drought conditions cause the vegetation to dry out quicker and with no recent rains before a fire, the rate of spread is considerably higher.”
In an attempt to conserve water, the City of Cape Town began enforcing level-three water restrictions at the start of this month.
The Fire and Rescue Service is limiting its water usage during practice drills to comply with these restrictions and only uses water for firefighting incidents where mitigation of loss of life, property and the environment is needed.
To control and extinguish fires, fire rescue teams usually rely on water hydrants, a source of potable water. Sometimes fire rescue teams will use dam water if available.
“Using a valuable resource like potable water contributes to the unnecessary water usage that could have been used for more vital purposes,” wrote Layne in an email.
“However, if we do not use the water it could result in greater damage and even loss of life.”
While the impact of using dam water is minimal for occasional operational incidents - with rescue teams using no more than 1 000 litres at a time usually - relying on dam water for firefighting in the long term could be problematic due to heat generation and evaporation, says Colin Diener, chief director of the provincial disaster management department.
Due to more frequent veld fire outbreaks, the City of Cape Town brings in an additional 120 regional firefighters and 28 reservist volunteers during the summer season.
The city’s rescue team also uses specialised compressed air foam system vehicles, which use only one-sixth the amount of water of a standard firefighting vehicle. From December to April, the city has two contracted helicopters set aside to fight vegetation fires.
According to the Western Cape Fire Rescue Services veld fire plan, the proactive approach to managing these fires includes the “rapid response of aerial fixed wing aircraft and helicopters which can be deployed to rapidly respond to fires in their incipient stages”.
Working on Fire, a national wildland firefighting resource which partners with Western Cape Fire Rescue Services, has seven spotter planes, seven helicopters and four fixed-wing water bombers to provide aerial firefighting services.
Last year, Kishugu aircraft used by Working on Fire were grounded a month before the fire season. The SA Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) had suspended Working on Fire’s air operating certificate for alleged failure to comply with legal requirements.
In April 2015, two of Working on Fire’s crew members died in a helicopter crash in Bainskloof between Wellington and Ceres during a forced emergency landing.
“All our firefighting aircraft supplied by Kishugu Aviation for the summer fires season have been issued with Certificates of Airworthiness by the SA Civil Aviation Authority,” wrote Linton Rensburg, the national communication manager of Working on Fire.
“They have been certified to be operational as firefighting aircraft.”
Working on Fire aircraft completed 1 121 flying hours of fire suppression in the Western Cape in the 2015/16 summer fire season.
Some of the main causes of wildfires, says the Western Cape government, are lightning, open cooking fires, smoking and burning of debris.
Veld fires usually occur between December and April of each year.
Weekend Argus