Residents fume over tardy response

JOBURG’S Emergency Management Services has again been criticised for taking too long to help victims of shack fires.

Residents of the Slovoville informal settlement said that as they scuttled about with buckets of water to try to stop the blaze, firefighters folded their arms and did nothing for a few hours.

“Paramedics were scolding them, saying their service was poor. They were asking them how they could stand there and do nothing, while people were losing their belongings,” one resident said.

The woman, who did not want to be named, said it was only when residents threatened to stone the firefighters that they started putting the fire out.

Joburg EMS spokeswoman Nana Radebe denied this. She said the water tanker carries only 3 500 litres of water, which is used up in a few minutes.

The problem was that only one hydrant was working. The other one was broken, she said.

“We did not take hours before putting out the fire; the hydrant was not working. We managed to connect to the other hydrant, but the residents were hostile and grabbed the hoses because they wanted to put out the fire themselves,” Radebe said.

In August, angry residents of Platform Five in Jeppestown stoned firefighters who responded to a fire at their informal settlement.

When the firefighters arrived on the scene, it was apparently three hours since they had been called out and three people had perished in the inferno.

At the same time, about 2km away, at the George Gogh informal settlement, firefighters responding to a blaze were nearly assaulted by residents, who accused them of being useless when their fire truck allegedly ran out of water while they were trying to put out the fire.