Cape Town - A 47-year-old woman died and about 160 people were left displaced when a fire broke out in the Kosovo informal settlement in Philippi, destroying more than 30 structures in the early hours of on Thursday morning.
City Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson Jermaine Carelse said the service received an emergency call at 7.27am of informal structures burning in Kosovo informal settlement, Philippi.
He said 10 firefighting appliances and approximately 50 staff firefighters responded to the scene and the fire was extinguished by 10.13am. The cause of the fire was still undetermined, he said.
Carelse said the number of structures and displaced people were still being verified.
Community leader Mziwethemba Mgulwa said while the cause of the fire was still unknown they were aware that it started from the deceased woman’s shack.
“I was woken up in the morning about a fire that had broken out, just three shacks away. We are aware that the women where the house started only arrived on Wednesday from the A section of the area. Ours is section B.
“She was given the shack to look after by her family but this happened just less than two days after her arrival. For us this fire season, right up until February. The fires are caused by a number of things.
“When the emergency services arrived a lot of damage had already been done and a number of shacks had already burned. When we tried to rescue her, the fire had already intensified and she had no chance to escape,” he said.
Mgulwa said while some were already rebuilding their shacks with the dilapidated materials, others had sought refuge with family members.
“It’s really a sad situation,” he said. “Most people don’t have materials to rebuild. Identity documents were destroyed in the fire, with us just a few days away from the local government elections, while schoolbooks were destroyed during final exams.”