Emergency services on standby for big freeze
The City of Joburg Emergency Management Services (EMS) said its teams will be on standby following a warning of adverse weather conditions by the South African Weather Service.
The weather service issued a level 2 warning of bitterly cold conditions with the possibility of disruptive rain from today going into the weekend.
It said temperatures are only expected to reach a high of 13ºC in Johannesburg.
Joburg EMS spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said they have taken note of the weather warnings and a significant drop in temperatures in most parts of Gauteng, including Johannesburg.
“This drop in temperatures means that our residents throughout the City of Joburg will be tempted to use all sorts of heating devices to try and warm themselves against [these] extremely cold temperatures, in the process making themselves vulnerable to fire incidents at home,” she said.
“We therefore would like to urge all our residents to use all heating devices safely such as heaters, imbawula (braziers), paraffin stoves, candles, and not to leave them unattended while in use, to prevent fire incidents at home.”
Mulaudzi said they will be prepared for any eventuality.
“We have our disaster management monitoring teams in all seven regions of the City of Joburg monitoring all incidents which might occur.
“And all our fire stations are fully operational throughout the city, to make sure that we can respond to any incidents which might occur over the weekend.”
Meanwhile, the cold weather conditions are likely to put pressure on the electricity grid, with increasing demand on generation capacity.
Eskom is currently implementing stage 2 load shedding from 5pm until 10pm for the rest of the week.
The parastatal ramped up the level of load shedding from stage 3 to stage 4 on Monday due to further loss in generating capacity.
Eskom implemented blackouts at the weekend when eight of its generators suffered losses.
On Monday, Eskom chief executive officer André de Ruyter said the electricity grid was severely constrained.