FLAMES OF FURY
Hundreds of firefighters battled a raging wildfire in Cape Town that destroyed everything in its path
IT HAD been an unusually quiet fire season and as autumn arrived authorities even dared to hope the Mother City would escape unscathed this year. But any illusion of escape was banished on the morning of Sunday 18 April when all hell was unleashed on the city.
At first it seemed like a regular Sunday morning, the slopes of the mountain dotted with hikers, cyclists and joggers enjoying the bright sunlight.
But the temperature was murderously high and the wind like a blast from a hot oven.
It wasn’t long before intense orange licks of flame became a terrible story.
By the end of the day, Cape Town was making global headlines as Armageddon-like scenes beamed around the world.
THE fire began on the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak, just above the highway snaking around the mountain into the city centre.
Strong winds sent it racing towards Rhodes Memorial, where the famous tea garden with sweeping views of the city was destroyed.
Dramatic cellphone footage showed an explosion as the restaurant’s gas bottles were detonated by the flames.
Next in the line of fire was the University of Cape Town (UCT), Africa’s top university. Several buildings were damaged, including the iconic Jagger Library which was all but gutted.
The building’s fire detection system triggered the fire shutters and prevented the spread of the blaze through the entire library, says Ujala Satgoor, executive director of UCT Libraries.
Jagger Library housed printed and audio-visual materials on African studies as well as 1 300 sub-collections of unique manuscripts and personal papers, more than 85 000 books and pamphlets on African studies and contained one of the most extensive African film collections in the world.
About 4 000 students, fleeing with whatever they could carry, were evacuated from residences on campus and accommodated in hotels, boarding houses and private homes in the city.
The fire also laid waste to the iconic Mostert’s Mill in Newlands, the oldest surviving windmill in the country, which was built 225 years ago.
Erected in 1796, it underwent restoration in 1935 and again in 1995. But once the flames hit the mill’s thatched roof and sails, onlookers could only watch helplessly as it was consumed.
City and UCT authorities approached aid organisation Gift of the Givers for help and Capetonians rallied, opening their hearts and wallets and flooding designated centres and fire stations with supplies for stranded students and firefighters.
Four firefighters were injured in the blaze. Helicopter pilots worked around the clock, dumping water on the flames and even filling their buckets from the swimming pools of nearby schools.
“One of the major contributors to the rapid rate of spread was the very old pine trees and their debris,” SANParks said in a statement. “The fire created its own wind that further increased the rate of spread.”
The UCT/Rhodes Memorial side of the mountain is dotted with alien species like pines. Pine trees contain highly flammable resin and have low-hanging branches and dense foliage that hangs onto dried needles.
They’re infamous as being the perfect tree for spreading fire.
Forensic investigator David Klatzow believes they’re the reason the f ire spread at the rate it did.
“The fire got to UCT very simply because the management of the vegetation on the western side of UCT was neglected,” he told CapeTalk radio. “There are pine trees all over the place and once they get going they are a danger to life and limb in a fire.”
By Sunday afternoon the wind had died down somewhat but firefighters remained on high alert – and with good reason.
The wind soon picked up in strength and velocity, hurtling up and around the mountain towards the hillside suburbs of Devil’s Peak and Vredehoek.
A contingent of 250 firefighters worked throughout the night, beating back flames and evacuating residents from homes at risk.
They also had to put out fires that were deliberately started on Devil’s Peak for which a man was arrested.
The fire is being described as one of the worst in the city’s recent history and also one of the most unusual as fire season is usually as its most intense in the blazing months of January and February.
A 2001 wildfire razed 8 000 hectares of the Cape Peninsula, destroying eight houses and causing R30 million worth of damage.
In 2015 a fire in the mountains above Kalk Bay spread and consumed 5 000 hectares between False Bay, Noordhoek, Hout Bay and Constantia. Three hundred people were evacuated.