Man dies in fire that destroys three homes
A DEADLY fire robbed a woman of her long-time partner and two families of their homes.
“I don’t have anything left,” Magrieta Konstabel said, after the wendy house she was living in was gutted by flames, killing her partner, Jakobus van Wyk, 48.
“Not a bank card, clothes. Not even my ID document. I’m homeless now,” she sobbed. The cause of the fire that broke out in Fisantekraal, 8km outside Durbanville, destroyed two informal dwellings and damaged an adjacent structure. Van Wyk was trapped in one of the wendy houses when it caught alight.
Konstabel, Van Wyk’s partner of many years, said the blaze started suddenly. “I’m still in shock,” she said tearfully. “Everything happened so suddenly.”
Konstabel was seated in the lounge of the main house of the property when neighbours noticed the smoke and flames. She rushed out, but the blaze had already consumed both wendy houses.
Elaine Hartzenberg, a close friend of the couple and the community, said nothing could be done to save the man: “We couldn’t get close enough to the house to get him out alive.”
Emergency services arrived on the scene, followed by firefighters from the Durbanville fire station, but there was nothing but a few dying flames left to be quelled.
Nonkubonga Tonqa, who lives in the house behind the wendy houses, was watching a film when she smelled smoke. She rushed out of the lounge to find a back room of the family home ablaze. “We’re lucky not to have lost our home,” she said.