Thu 31 August 2023:
A fire in a multi-story building in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, killed at least 73 people, including a toddler.
According to the Emergency Management Services, a further 52 people were injured in the blaze, which broke out early on Thursday.
People have been evacuated from the building, and a search and recovery operation is underway, according to an emergency services official. The death toll was likely to grow, according to Robert Mulaudzi, it was unclear what triggered the fire.
Malawian expat Daras living in South Africa, received a phone call from friends at around 8am (06:00 GMT) on Thursday, informing her of a fire at a building where her husband, Solomon Daras lived.
The 37-year-old immediately rushed to the scene from Mayfair, a suburb west of the city, but has not heard any news about her husband since arriving outside the gutted building.
It has left her wondering if her husband is one of the 73 people who have been reported dead so far, or amongst the 52 injured.
“I haven’t heard anything about Solomon. We don’t know whether he is dead or at the hospital”.
While emergency services officials conducted their search of the building, Elis and a group of women waited on a pavement two streets away from the scene.
The five-storey building, located at the corner of Alberts and Delvers Street in Johannesburg’s central business district, has been termed “one of those hijacked, abandoned buildings in the inner city” by Johannerburg’s Emergency Management Service (EMS) official Robert Mulaudzi.
73 killed as fire engulfs five-storey building in Johannesburg
According to the Emergency Management Services, a further 52 people were injured in the blaze, which broke out early on Thursday.
#Johannesburg #JohannesburgFire pic.twitter.com/2Qi1c1FunH
— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) August 31, 2023
“It is like an informal settlement, inside a building. So we have to go through all the debris inside the building, floor by floor to make sure that we can be able to recover more bodies out of this fire incident,” Mulaudzi told local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.
Abandoned and broken-down buildings in the area are common, and often taken over by crime syndicates, who then rent rooms to people desperately seeking some form of accommodation, in the populous economic heart of South Africa.
Hundreds of people lived in an informal settlement, in a building that had been abandoned by the original owner, and subsequently taken over informally, with people rented space in that structure; safety requirements were not in place, because the property was abandoned.
Illegal landlords rented out rooms in ‘hijacked building’
According to reports in local media, Usindiso, the building that caught fire, is owned by the city of Johannesburg and was leased to a nongovernmental organisation that supports unhoused people.
Local reports said the building had since been “hijacked” by illegal landlords who rent rooms to people on an informal basis.
“This is an abandoned building, one that was hijacked and taken over by informal landlords,” Al Jazeera’s Miller reported from Johannesburg.
She said witnesses told her there were dozens of rooms on each floor with “about five people in each room”.
“So it really was overcrowded.”
Johannesburg building fire live: At least 64 dead in South Africa blaze #joburgcbdfire #Johannesburgfire pic.twitter.com/r1GOWXylnJ
— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) August 31, 2023
Blaze demonstrates ‘chronic’ housing issues
Johannesburg is one of the world’s most unequal cities with widespread poverty, joblessness and a housing crisis.
It has about 15,000 homeless people, according to Gauteng’s provincial government.
Lebogang Isaac Maile, the head of the Human Settlements department for Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg, said some of the victims may have been renting from criminal gangs illegally collecting fees.
“There are cartels who prey on who are vulnerable people. Because some of these buildings, if not most of them, are actually in the hands of those cartels who collect rental from the people,” he told reporters at the scene.
Maile said the fire “demonstrates a chronic problem of housing in our province, as we’ve previously said that there’s at least 1.2 million people who need housing.”
The city suffers from chronic power shortages during which many resort to candles for light and wood fires for heat.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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