Imtiaz Sooliman – Gqeberha residents urged to relocate following raging fire.
AI: Summary ©
The focus is on two fires in Bayview and next door, which are preventing them from moving into other areas and causing damage to other areas. The disaster management team is working on emergency response planning and removing houses from areas affected by the fire. People are willing to move out of settlements to save their lives, but they are unsure how many people will move out and the fire is expected to be a problem. The speakers hope to resolve the situation and bring people out of homes to save their lives.
AI: Summary ©
The focus now is the two big fires, the one in Bayview, in the
area called beach view, and the other one next door, which is sea
view. Both of them are coastal, both of them near the sea. The
fire started in the beach view area came towards the houses
burnt, I think, two houses down, and the fire trucks are trying to
prevent the fire from getting to the other houses. The problem is,
whilst the firefighters were trying to fight that fire, there
were fires in other areas nearby, and there's not enough fire
personnel, not enough fire trucks. And the problem is, there's a
strong wind, which aggravated the situation. In addition to that,
some of the trucks cannot go into certain areas if they're not
possible and they're too big. They need smaller buckets, four by
fours to put, carrying water, carrying capacity, and trailers to
move in. And that, and the other province firefighters have. They
can't use all the water on the fire that's far away from the
homes, because once the water fire comes close to the homes, they run
out of water. And the fire source is quite a distant. The water
source is quite a distance to refill the trucks. So they have
all these challenges, and they don't have enough firefighters,
all these things can be dealt with. The fastest way and the most
efficient way is to deal with is to send in helicopters that can
put out the fire with water from the sea. We've now given a
contract at four o'clock this morning, instruction will be given
to send it to helicopters and a spotter plane. The spotter plane
will communicate for the helicopters and the fire control
center on the ground and and the helicopters, fortunately, because
the sea is right next to where the fire is, can do many loads of
water and drop it on the fire area. On the fire areas. That's
the first intervention, secondly, to augment the firefighters that
the fire trucks, because they're running out of water, we're
sending our own water tankers to to support the fire firefighter
trucks. And we don't have to look far for getting the water, because
we've done 45 balls in in the city because of day zero. So we have
some very good balls not too far away from the from the fire
source, and some of them give us up to 70,000 liters per hour. In
addition to that, we can draw water from city boss that has a
capacity of loading 35,000 liters in 32 minutes. And they can
provide 500,000 liters of desalination water per day.
They're actually and they've already given us 84 pellets, which
is 12,000 by five liter bottle water, which we can use either for
drinking or for the fire itself. The other challenge is going to be
the firefighters. We've activated Capt disaster management, and we
can send in 30 people or more tomorrow morning to support the
firefighters if necessary, if the helicopter system doesn't work
well enough, or it takes too long. And then the last two parts is
that the firefighters are exhausted, they're hungry, they're
thirsty. We provided midstream this evening energy drinks, energy
bars, chocolates and hygiene, and hygiene for the eyes, because the
eyes get dry and irritated with the fire and smoke. And then the
big challenge right now, as I'm speaking to you, is the fire
coming to the informal settlements. We we've already
working with the fire brigade and the police services. We've opened
halls. We brought in blankets and mattresses that we had on site.
We're already feeding the people. And disaster management is on site
now, bringing trucks to evacuate the people from sea view informal
settlement and comes nearby. So it's a very collaborative effort.
And hopefully, you know, lives will be saved, but we're going to
need the helicopters for the fire out in Jess Do you have any idea
of the number of people who are in danger, or perhaps the number of
homes that are being threatened by the fires that you're working in,
the areas that you're working in? Nobody's
focused on those figures. You just You just see the video pictures.
There's a lot of homes in the area, and there's lots of panic,
because, you know, after people saw the first house was being
burnt in the informal settlements, we have no idea how many
structures there are and in the community the next door. So right
now, to prevent loss of life, the safest thing is just to move
people out and but, and for a change, you know, normally
informal settlement people don't look to move. Like to move away
from their homes, but this time, it is they themselves who came
forward out of the office and said they want to move. One lady
commented that the children have already missed themselves in the
house out of fear and anxiety that the fire is coming. So there's
been lot of cooperation and informal settlement. The
settlement people have understood the danger of what's happening,
and they were very willing to move out of the homes there. Actually,
they were calling for trucks to come fetch them, to take them to a
safe zone. So in terms of, if everybody follows that process and
gets onto the trucks and gets to the hallway, we providing food and
support for them, we'll save all the lives in that area. But we all
don't want to save the lives only these homes and the positions are
people's lives. Positions. These are poor people, you know, they
can't afford to replace what's lost, and we're hoping that we can
put a fire out before it gets to the home, and in that way, we can
save their homes and the other homes of the more affluent society
in terms of a temporary accommodation. What support?
Or direction are you getting from the city, from the various
municipalities of where you can move them for temporary shelter?
Well, the shelter is provided already. The community hall has
been open. The council is on site. Disaster Management is on site,
fire teams on site, and SAP is on site, you know. So everybody's on
site right now, so the facilities have been found that venues are
there, and people are moving to that venue. So there's, there's no
issue in that side.
There's full cooperation and collaboration, and people are
being moved, and they're willing to
move. Does this see you and the volunteers and firefighters
working through the night, as you say, the wind are sweeping up the
danger, bringing other fires and close proximity to where you're
already struggling. Does it seem like a mammoth task?
Yes, you know, I mean the first, the first message that we got from
the fire adapting. Fire Chief is, my firefighters are exhausted.
Wasn't talking about the fire. Wasn't talking about the danger to
houses. He said, My firefighters are exhausted. They they can't
sleep, they can't eat. They have to move on a shelf basis. They
have to continue fighting this fire, otherwise they're going to
have serious promise. We don't have enough people. The fire is
spread in all different directions. It's in different
areas. There's not enough water, there's not enough trucks, the
wind is too strong, so that has been a challenge. And in spite of
that, they've been doing extremely well. And then, of course, the
residents themselves have been trying with whatever water they
got. Was just putting the fire out, but in the absence of huge
amounts of water coming from the air. This is not going to work.
The fire chiefs even told us that some areas are not possible. So
even though they have the water truck, they can't get there. So
they can't put the fire out because they can't get there. And
then again, the active fire chief made a call to say, the only way
you can get solve this issue of bringing under control so that the
ground. Troops can ground for teams can can speed, kill a fire
faster. It's a water to come from the air. And they said, look, the
sea is right here. The the fire is right here by the sea. So it's
easy for the helicopters to come but we don't have the helicopters,
he said, and that's why we made arrangements from Cape Town.
There's helicopter in George. There's another one in
Stellenbosch, and at 4am you know it, depending on how the wind is
and how the fire is, will then give the instruction to get the
contract for the helicopters to fly out for the spot to play. So.