Time to fight real fires
THIS winter it’s different – our relationship with fire, that is. Usually in the face of lower temperatures and colder seas we retreat indoors, light our fires and snuggle up.
Drought, high winds and sparks have changed that.
Wild fire has swept along the Garden Route and, with it, tragedy and destruction.
A number of lives have been lost and numerous homes burnt to the ground.
What do you say to someone who has lost a loved one to fire, how do you explain to someone standing in front of the shell of his or her house the randomness of it all?
The public response to the fires has been astounding and soul-restoring; spontaneous networks on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter coordinated evacuations, volunteer efforts, donations of food, blankets and clothing.
From requests for Lip Ice, not Vaseline, to mayor Athol Trollip’s public request for water tankers, citizens have responded generously – opening schools, homes, wallets and hearts.
Water tankers began arriving within 15 minutes of the mayor’s appeal.
If anything should give our country hope, it’s our ability – as South Africans – to “make a plan” and our coming together in times of crisis such as these.
Those of us privileged to live along the Southern Cape coast’s Garden Route are not strangers to wild fires.
In November 2012, 76 homes were lost in the St Francis fire.
In January last year, a stray flare supposedly set off a fire within the Cape St Francis nature reserve and damaged eight homes.
Our unique fynbos biome has evolved a complex relationship with fire – many species of proteas are unable to germinate without it and are reliant on the ash for restoring essential minerals.
Our emergency services are (relatively) well geared to deal with the crisis – the metro fire brigade responded to some 3 115 call-outs in 2014 (as per the latest figures by the Fire Protection Association of SA – FPASA).
Reports at the time of writing suggest some 408 buildings were destroyed in Knysna. It’s heart-breaking. But we’re no strangers to our homes being burnt down and lives being lost.
The threat of runaway shack fires is a constant concern to many of our citizens – FPASA reported more than 10 000 informal and formal dwelling fire incidents in 2014 across South Africa, resulting in more than R512-million in damages.
StatsSA recorded 2 360 reported mortalities in 2015 due to “smoke, fire and flames”. But fire isn’t our biggest killer. According to StatsSA, it doesn’t even account for 1% of total mortalities.
The big killers are tuberculosis (33 063 – 7.21% of deaths) and diabetes (25 070 – 5.4% of deaths).
Even assault (7 201 – 1.6% of deaths) and motor vehicle accidents (6 300 – 1.4% of deaths) account for more.
Yet somehow death-by-fire grips our imaginations.
In August 2015 a shack burnt down in Wells Estate, killing all seven occupants, including a 10-month-old baby.
The cause was still being investigated when citizens in the area burnt the alleged perpetrator to death.
Why that horrific response?
Could it be that, as with our irrational fear of shark attacks (with only four to six deaths a year globally, our fears of the fin-in-thewater are most certainly irrational), fire holds some kind of place of honour in our collection of primordial fears?
Fire certainly brings out some primal responses.
One of which is turning ordinary people into unexpected heroes (and hats off to the people who do this as a day job – you’re awesome).
Unfortunately, the wildfires also drive out the goggas and attention-seekers from the rocks they reside under and onto social media.
From some followers of Pastor Tim Omotoso who, in response to him not being released on bail, suggested that it was now time for God to destroy this country (using the wildfires), to the idiot tweeting that “I actually smiled when I saw that Knysna is going thru it all, cause we all know what the majority of the population is there” (a comment seemingly directed at whites, but the Twitterverse quickly pointed out the mistake, that blacks were actually the majority in Knysna) to some dumb youngster in Port Elizabeth linking the fires to payback for Knysna resident’s objection to establishing a mosque (check out Gift of the Givers and Yusuf Abramjee for an insight into genuine Muslim community responses).
On Saturday the Knysna Municipality (and SAPS), in desperation to focus their resources, had to release a please-just-stop-it-now media statement to quench the fake news that two arsonists had been arrested and that trucks with donated goods were being hijacked.
You may have heard the voice note on WhatsApp saying that anyone carrying a can of petrol should be considered a suspect – heaven forbid anyone who runs out of petrol in this period!
I’d suggest you walk home.
This need to fill social media with ill-considered, knee-jerk tripe is in part because our “smart” phones allow us a distance that enables a false bravado with no direct feedback (try swearing at Springbok lock Eben Etzebeth when standing in front of him).
In part too, like nature, we abhor a vacuum and prejudices make for handy, quick-fix fillers.
But the key to unpacking our responses is recognising that as humans in the face of any unknown threat, our fight-flee-freeze response turns shadows into “real” monsters just to give us an edge in beating them to the door – a better-safethan-sorry reaction.
In this sense the wild fires offer an unfortunate but apt metaphor for where South Africa is at the moment: the goodwill that cascaded down during our rainbow honeymoon has now evaporated and we are deep into a political drought.
Add to this the high winds being generated by the Gupta/President Jacob Zuma PR machine and all you need is a little spark, like a dumb racist comment, to create a wild fire.
Maybe too, the response to the wild fires can suggest a way out of our mess?
First, we’re a lot more united than social media lets on – real evidence that together we are stronger.
Second, by building in a pause-and-reflect button in our thinking we can catch our thumbs before they tweet “fire”.
We need to focus our resources on fighting the real fire – like TB, diabetes, inequality, unemployment and an economy in reverse.
The pseudo wildfires – of race, religion and the belief that only I am right – detract and hijack resources needed elsewhere.
‘ The wild fires offer an unfortunate but apt metaphor for where South Africa is at the moment: the goodwill . . . during our rainbow honeymoon has now evaporated
Gary Koekemoer is a facilitator (conflict, diversity, strategy), has lived in the Middle East, Europe and Africa, and has a doctorate on race currently under construction.