UPDATE: Family blames EMS for their loss during fire
BRIXTON – Fire engine arrived without water to a burning house in Brixton.
The Zwane family whose house was severely damaged by fire on 2 September, blames the Brixton Fire Station for their loss as well as the loss of personal belongings of the students who are tenants there.
Hezekiel Zwane, the owner, said the fire engine took an hour to arrive at his house, and as if that was not enough, they did not bring enough water.
He said he arrived at the station at 1.30pm to inform the emergency personnel about the fire at his home.
“They told me there was no emergency fire engine. And I also found out that some people had already reported the incident before I arrived,” said Zwane.
He helplessly went back to his house where together with his family and residents, they tried to extinguish the fire.
Zwane said the first response came at about 2.30pm, but everything was already burned.
“Driving to Brixton Fire Station from my burning home took me three minutes, but a fire engine arrived at my place after an hour,” he said.
“On their arrival, they started sourcing water from around my street which made it worse. I don’t understand why they even came to my house in the first place without enough water.
Zwane said he was not aware that his house was on fire, he was alerted by a passerby who noticed smoke coming from the house.
He added that he was relieved that the students were not in the house when it happened even though they lost their belongings.
“Some were at their homes for the school holidays, others were attending lecturers at the University of Johannesburg.
Joburg Emergency Services spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said their call centre received the call at about 1.20pm.
“The Brixton Fire Station didn’t have any fire engines at the time; we had to wait for the Florida and Rosebank fire engines,” said Mulaudzi.
About arriving without enough water, Mulaudzi responded that the area doesn’t have functioning fire hydrants so they had to again send a water tanker to assist.
“These fire engines normally have between 1 500 and 3 500 litres of water depending on the capacity – so at any time when we respond to fire incidents, we need fully functioning fire hydrants to supplement the water from the tank during firefighting operations to avoid situations where we will have no water in the tank of a fire engine,” said Mulaudzi.
Mulaudzi said the cause of the fire is unknown however, they suspect that it might be due to an electrical fault because they ”had to disconnect some of the plugs which were left on in some rooms in the house.”
Mulaudzi urged the students to make sure that they leave all electrical plugs off and disconnected from the plugs to avoid this fire incidence.
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