Durban - A fire that broke out at an Isipingo council flat at the weekend, killing a pensioner, could have been doused and the man saved if fire hoses were installed, irate tenants say.
Anand Balaram, 57, died in the Orient Hills ground floor flat he shared with his son and his family as neighbours desperately sought to extinguish the flames by forming a human chain to move buckets of water from another flat.
“We could have saved him,” sighed Lenny Govender, who lives in a block next to Balaram’s. He told POST that Balaram was standing at the window of his flat on Saturday when he heard him scream “help me”.
Smoke was seen to be coming out of the open door, he said.
But the burglar gate was locked and tenants who gathered tried in vain to force it open. The rising flames pushed them back.
“The rest of the community was already there and we tried to get hold of a fire extinguisher but there weren’t any,” he said.
“We made a human chain from the next-door flat where they had access to water to extinguish the fire.
“If the fire extinguisher was there we would have saved Anand; this could have got the fire down to a minimum.”
Another neighbour, Kubendran Govender, said by the time they broke the gate, it was too late.
“There was too much smoke to go in.”
Lenny said it was an “ongoing struggle” to get the eThekwini Municipality to install fire extinguishers or hoses.
“The Ethekwini Municipality renovated the flats recently. We were told R90 million was paid to renovate the Durban South Flats, but they did not install the most important thing, fire hoses, and they are aware of it. Due to this we had to watch a person die,” he said.
He added that there were many old and disabled people living in the council flats who would be in danger if there was no way to effectively douse fires.
ER24 spokesman Pieter Rossouw, whose paramedics were on scene along with municipal emergency crews, said: “We do not know what happened or how the fire was caused.
“That is subject to investigation by local fire and police departments.”
Security company Alpha Alarms had also responded to the fire, despite Balaram not being a client.
Spokeswoman Krishnee Naidoo said the firm’s armed response officers were alerted to the emergency but had “stood down at the scene to ensure that emergency services were given ample space to execute their duties as police had not arrived”.
Balaram was alone in the flat at the time. His family said they did not want to comment.
The municipality had not responded to calls seeking comment by time of publication.
Anand Balaram died on Saturday after a fire broke out at his council flat.
The Post