Firefighters sift through the smouldering remains of a shack in Siyahlala-lah as the acrid smoke of burnt clothes and synthetic materials hangs heavy in the afternoon sun on Thursday.
Members of Newcastle Protection Services leave nothing to chance, extinguishing every last trace of the blaze which just claimed someone’s belongings and the roof over their head.
Fortunately, the owner of the shack was not home when the fire started, the cause of which is believed to have been a gas stove or heater.
The inhabitants of the shack will return today, with nothing of their home left to them but a few items of burned clothing and pieces of charred appliances.
According to www.internafrica.org, fires displaced about 1 516 people killing 81 people, mostly children and a total of 4 908 shacks were destroyed in 2012.
The statistics for the 2000 to 2010 decade paint a horrific picture.
The statistics for the 2000 to 2010 decade paint a horrific picture of the amount of people displaced by fires, floods and other factors, such as xenophobic attacks and evictions by government:
Number of Shacks: 68,710
Human Settlement Deaths: 335
Humans Displaced from Settlements: 237,412
Burn Victims: 90
