Imtiaz Sooliman – Gqeberha residents urged to relocate following raging fire.

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.