Cape Town – Zibelele Bala never imagined himself on the front lines of a fire as massive as the blaze that gutted thousands of hectares of vegetation and destroyed two homes on the shores of False Bay this week.
Bala, 28, based at the Newlands fire station, always dreamt of becoming a firefighter but never imagined he’d be tasked with fighting 10 fires in less than 30 days.
His group has been dousing the Cape wildfires since December 16, two weeks after the fire season officially started.
Bala, of Mfuleni, braved the dense smoke that covered Simon’s Town and Vasco da Gama Park on Wednesday and put in a 16-hour shift. He was also on hand for a 12-hour stint to douse the fire in Redhill Road on Thursday.
The city’s fire and rescue services were knee-deep in fires this week and by midday on Tuesday three helicopters were water-bombing the affected Somerset areas.
By 3.44pm, 107 city firefighters assisted by 50 Working on Fire and 12 Nature Conservation staff were putting out blazing fires in the area.
Video courtesy of Byron Ashington
While ground crews monitored the areas and attended to hot spots and flare-ups, resources and crews remained on scene throughout the night.
The fire on the Du Toitskloof mountains in Paarl left a trail of destruction, with several many structures burnt to the ground and residents evacuated.
More than 160 firefighters were deployed to attend to the blaze.
Meanwhile, others were dealing with an extensive area of vegetation burning on the M19 near N7 Wolwerivier, Morningstar.
On Thursday, the Weekend Argus saw at least one snake that had been killed by the fire.
Eskom officials, who had been replacing overhead cables and nine poles damaged by the fire, said they had seen at least three dead tortoises in the vicinity.
Barely a week after his home was gutted by a fire, James Johannesson, a supervisor at the vineyard, was left furious when copper thieves showed up and demolished what was left of it and rummaged it for copper.
His home, which is on the Druk My Niet Wine Estate, was the only house which burned down, while 150 people were evacuated from surrounding farms.
The wine estate vineyards are the source of his salary of R3500 a month, which covered the expenses of his family of six.
“The farm will take time to recover, the vineyard was damaged badly and that was the source of my income.”
Johannesson said it unsettled him that the copper thieves had moved quickly to erase some of the remaining memories of his farmhouse.
He had used all his December salary to buy groceries and stationery for his daughter, Kaylin. But the fire took it all and Kaylin has attended her first three days of school without the necessary supplies.
“The day before yesterday (on Friday) we were assured of our jobs by the vineyard,” said Johannesson.
A building inspector visited a visibly distressed Angela Smith, whose house was charred by Wednesday’s fire in Simon’s Town, to assess the fire and water damage at her house in Paradise Road. She said the name of her street brought an irony to the incident.
She said the house had been worth R2.6million the last time she checked its value. Her daughter, Fran, had been packing their clothes in the family car, preparing to go and live with family members in the southern suburbs.
She said after the rush of evacuations, she received the dreaded phone call from a neighbour, who told her her house was one of those damaged by the fire. She had been following updates on the community’s WhatsApp group.
“The damage in my house is more than I can manage,” Angela Smith said. “It’s going to take at least six months to recover.”
She said they were relying on the insurance to repair the damage.
Robson Shaba, a gardener in Simon’s Town, struggled to get to work and his taxi had to use an alternative route.
A neighbour, Phillip Kilroe, whose house was destroyed in the fire, kept his eyes on the damaged chandeliers as friends visited his home to console him.
Liezl Moodie, the city’s Fire and Rescue Service spokeswoman, on Friday said both the Simon’s Town and Somerset West fires were still active, with firefighters expected to monitor both scenes until today.
On Wednesday, three cases of arson had been reported in Stellenbosch after three bushes were deliberately set alight, said fire station commander Zane Malan.