Sowetan: 100 shacks razed in fire

http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2010/12/09/100-shacks-razed-in-fire

100 shacks razed in fire

Dec 9, 2010 | Elvis ka Nyelenzi

A RAGING shack fire burned about 100 shacks and a community crèche to the ground in Khayelitsha on Tuesday night.

This is the worst shack fire so far in Cape Town this summer and informal settlement residents fear that hundreds will have lost their homes by the end of the season.

Khayelitsha’s QQ Section crèche, built by the community more than two years ago, was destroyed. The only toilet in the settlement, a dry toilet bought by the community for the crèche for R3000 – was also destroyed.

Speaking to Sowetan after the fire, resident Mthobeli Qona said he called the nearest fire brigade, in Site C, Khayelitsha, as soon as the fire started, but they said they did not have water in their tanks.

“They said we must wait for another fire brigade from further away to come. It came after an hour, when all the shacks were burnt down. Everything is gone now.”

There are only five taps in the settlement of 5000 people and residents tried to stop the fire using buckets of water.

Qona hit out at the City of Cape Town, saying they had offered each family only eight wooden poles and five sheets of zinc to rebuild their shacks. “This is nothing,” Qona said.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape president Mzonke Poni, who built the community crèche in 2008, described the fire as “a direct result of the contempt in which the government holds the poor”.