Johannesburg - Since her firefighter husband died of smoke inhalation after being trapped in a basement four days ago, Lindiwe Zwane has been acting strangely.
This has concerned her family.
Lindiwe, 35, Zwane’s wife of five years and the mother of his 3-year-old daughter, did not sleep a wink on Sunday night.
On the day she was told her husband Dan Zwane, 51, died on duty, Lindiwe refused to believe it.
“The person that was taken out of that building is not my husband, they must just say where they are hiding him,” she reportedly told her younger sister, Nokulunga Masondo.
When her husband’s superiors later brought his possessions, including his watch to the house, she still refused to believe he was dead.
On Monday, she went to the mortuary to identify his body. After getting proof that he was indeed dead, Lindiwe went quiet.
“My sister really needs counselling to deal with this,” Masondo said.
Dan and his colleague Michael Letsosa died of smoke inhalation after running out of oxygen in the dark and smoke-filled basement of the Nedbank Mall in the CBD at the weekend.
Some of their colleagues have blamed their deaths on their incident commander, who they allege failed to adhere to safety instructions when he took the men into the basement to determine where the billowing smoke was coming from.
The incident manager crawled out to safety and was taken to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, but Zwane and Letsosa were not that lucky.
Zwane’s family refuse to believe the circumstances of his death. They said Zwane had been putting out fires for the past 27 years. Something about the incident does not make sense, they claim.
Zwane’s 31-year-old son, Nkululeko, said: “So many people are coming with different stories… We all need to know what happened so that he (Zwane) can rest in peace.”
Joburg Emergency Management Services spokesman Robert Mulaudzi said the EMS chief had reassured the families
they would get to the bottom of the incident.
Michael was described on Tuesday as a pillar of the family.
The dead fireman was a provider for his parents and two siblings after his 56-year-old father who worked for a plastic manufacturing company was retrenched in March.
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The Star