Getting more fire trucks might take a year – City of Joburg
The 11 fire engines not enough to serve 30 fire stations
It will take almost a year for the City of Johannesburg to purchase 19 additional fire engines that its emergency medical services (EMS) is running short of.
The city currently has 11 fire engines and two water tankers to serve its 30 fire stations and with winter fires coming, the city had to make plans to squeeze the flee it currently has.
The city’s EMS spokesperson, Robert Mulaudzi, told Sowetan that the city has 1,300 firefighters and needs 30 fire engines for the whole of Joburg.
“The ideal situation is for us to have 30 fire trucks with each catering for each station. The situation right now is not ideal. We have not been operating fully in the last two years,” said Mulaudzi.
Mulaudzi said the city has money to procure the 19 needed trucks. “The process started this year. We have started advertising the tender and it might take the whole year to be completed.
“There will be six months of advertising processes and then another six months of outlining the specifications for the trucks we want,” said Mulaudzi.
Mulaudzi said for the last two years their firefighting services have adopted a strategy whereby five stations [out of the 30] operate on two trucks servicing one district.
“Each district will have two fire trucks to respond to emergencies. It is not an ideal situation, but we have a responsibility to provide a service to our residents and stretch whatever resources we have and if the situation gets out of hand and we require additional resources, we have a memorandum of understanding with our neighbouring municipalities of Tshwane and Ekurhuleni to assist us,” said Mulaudzi.
He said the last time the city had 30 trucks was 10 years ago.
“We could not buy new vehicles because of tender issues. There were contracts that were cancelled one after the other due to administrations changing all the time.”
Meanwhile, eight stalls were gutted by fire on Wednesday night at Pan Africa Mall in Alexandra. Firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading.
Mulaudzi said there were no injuries or fatalities reported and the cause of the fire is unknown. He said investigations are underway to determine the cause of the fire.
“We also want to distance ourselves from allegations that the fire might have been caused by an altercation between members of Dudula [Operation Dudula] and foreign nationals. We do not want to involve ourselves on that one. We do not have evidence to that effect.
“We are conducting investigations as to determine the cause of the fire incident and preliminary investigations will tell us as to what might be the cause of the fire.”
When Sowetan visited the scene of the blaze yesterday morning, dozens of people were standing next to the stalls looking on as their owners were walking through the debris, cleaning up and trying to find what was left from the damage.