Cape Town - Firefighters were on Monday evening still battling to contain blazes that started in Scarborough in the early hours of Monday morning and quickly spread, damaging at least 20 homes and displacing more than 80 people in nearby Ocean View.
City fire and rescue spokesman Theo Layne said the Ocean View fire was being fanned by strong south-easterly winds and was blowing high up the slopes of the mountain.
He added that the homes that were burnt were in the Rasta Camp in Ocean View.
The fire affected Ocean View, Scarborough, Misty Cliffs and Kommetjie, and firefighters and volunteers were expected to have to work through the night.
“We have approximately 200 firefighters from various services, including 100 city firefighters, Working on Fire, Table Mountain National parks, Volunteer Wildland Fire Services on the scene, and they will remain through the night,” Layne said.
The firefighters set up command posts in Ocean View and Marti Weddepohl, managing director of Mercy Networks, an NGO specialising in the provision of disaster distress relief, was providing relief in the form of water and food for the firefighters on Monday. Weddepohl said no houses were burnt in Scarborough but that from what she could see, firefighters were still battling with flare-ups.
The fire comes after firefighters battled fires in the Table Mountain National Park at the weekend.
Philip Prins, Table Mountain National Parks fire manager, said there was some suspicion that some of the fires had been started deliberately.
“Even if you take the one we had on the weekend, some can be attributed to vagrants, but some of them there is a suspicion they were started deliberately.
“We started on Saturday afternoon. There was one in the Devil’s Peak area and one on Signal Hill, and below Signal Hill there are a lot of vagrants in that area and those can be attributed to vagrants.”
He said it was difficult to say if a fire was started deliberately or not, and they have hired a company, Enviro Wildfire Services, to investigate. In other reports, Rob Erasmus, of Enviro Wildfire Service, said even though many of the fires were vegetation fires, a lot of money went into fire fighting.
Erasmus was quoted as saying the cost of putting out the fires could run into millions, and that just the aerial resources were costly.
“It costs around R23 000 per hour for helicopters to fly.”
In a statement, Table Mountain National Park said its preliminary estimates indicated that almost 1 000 hectares had been alight so far.
“In comparison to the same time last year, the park has seen a notable increase in the intensity and frequency of fires in the national park.
“In January alone we saw close to 250 Working on Fire firefighters engaged in battling 16 fires across the Western Cape.”
City council safety and security executive director Richard Bosman said by 8pm on Monday the fire was still burning at Misty Cliffs towards Ocean View, but added that no property was in danger. “The community hall in Ocean View has been opened for residents of the Rasta Camp who had their structures burnt down, the SA Navy is also assisting with a (fire) engine at Misty Cliffs.”
Cape Argus