Cape Town fire guts valuable library collection, moves closer to city
A weekend fire in Cape Town has ravaged part of a university library housing a unique collection of African archives, its director said Monday, as the blaze advanced towards the city centre.
The fire, which broke out Sunday in the foothills of the city’s landmark Table Mountain before spreading to the University of Cape Town (UCT), forced hundreds of students to flee on foot.
The African studies section of the 1930s building and its parquet-floored reading room were “completely gutted”, the head of UCT Libraries Ujala Satgoor said in a Facebook post on Sunday.
“Some of our valuable collections have been lost,” she wrote, adding that fire shutters had protected other parts of the building.
Thick smoke hovered over a deserted UCT campus on Monday, blocked off to students and staff.
One student, 20-year-old Kosmas Joannou, had walked over from a nearby residence hall to gauge the situation.
“It was just horrible,” Joannou told AFP.
Joannou, a student in business studies, added: “All the history that was lost in the library, that destroys me.”
Hundreds of students housed closer to the blaze have been moved to temporary accommodation, with donors sending food and other essentials. Firefighters were still battling the blaze on Monday high winds pushed the fire west, closer to the city centre.
Schools in the suburb of Vredehoek, around three kilometres away from UCT, have been asked to evacuate.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, with one suspect taken into custody overnight, city official Alderman JP Smith said.
The blaze has already destroyed the Cecil Rhodes Memorial Restaurant, private homes and historical structures such as the Mostert’s Hill windmill.
No casualties have been reported so far apart from a few firefighters who have been injured.