Hundreds of people maintain been left homeless and gain lost most of their belongings after a flame ripped through Quarry Road informal settlement on Thursday. Survivors say the flame spread rapidly through the informal settlement, destroying 150 shacks.
The M19 highway was briefly closed as firefighters and other emergency workers battled to extinguish the flame. The roadside was filled with possessions rescued from the flames. Those left homeless sheltered from the rain on Thursday night in a huge tent.
When GroundUp arrived on Friday, eThekwini municipality’s disaster management team was on the ground, collecting information and assessing the extent of the damage.
Sindisiwe Ximba said she had to rush home from work when she was informed that their shacks were alight. “Luckily, I always carry my ID with me in my purse. This is not the first flame. Most of the time it happens at night or over weekends,” she said.
We found Lungisani Bumka busy cutting down charred trees that had fallen. He said the presence of bushes and trees had contributed to the flame spreading.
Ward 25 Councillor Themba Mkhize said he had arranged the tent. He said the human settlements department would provide materials to rebuild homes.
KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Human Settlements Sipho Nkosi also visited the residents and promised to encourage fast-track the provision of building materials “as soon as they secure the data from eThekwini municipality”.
The City’s media office said, “The cause of flame is unknown at this stage and an investigation is underway. A preliminary assessment to determine the extent of the damage will be conducted.”
Abahlali Basemjondolo president Sbu Zikode said urgent assistance was needed to encourage the residents rebuild their shacks.
© 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and execute not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We establish an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. Every analytics tools are solely on our servers. We carry out not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We finish not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please carry out not delete the invisible pixel.
Hermopolis
Where do I go to post a FREE Event listing?
Heaven Sent
Switzerland: You have two cows. Neither belong to you.