Fire erupts in Little Falls

A fire erupted in a garage on a property in Little Falls in the evening of 11 October. Neighbours were alerted when they saw smoke emanating from the garage.

Neighbour Gui Fiques ran outside around 6pm and saw a number of concerned neighbours watching the fire. “Realising no one is doing anything to assist with the fire, I decided to help out in whichever way I could,” he said.

Fiques said that his daughter and her boyfriend connected water from his property as well as from other neighbours to attempt to slow down the fire while the City of Joburg Emergency Management Services were still on their way.

The fire then started spreading to the house proper. “My daughter’s boyfriend and I went on the roof of the burning house with a hose pipe and sprayed water on it and inside the house in an attempt to stop the fire from spreading,” he said.

Neighbour Basie Buys said a number of residents called the EMS for their assistance with the fire. “The EMS didn’t take long to arrive on the scene and were fully prepared,” he said.

According to witnesses, the owners of the house managed to remove their car out their garage. Buys said that they looked very distressed and upset at what was happening to their home.

The neighbours said that when the EMS arrived they used their fire engine to stop the fire but it ran out of water. They connected the pipe to the fire hydrant, but it was out of water as well.

EMS media liaison officer Nana Radebe said that the first EMS vehicle arrived on the scene at 6.40pm, after they received a phone call from a resident on scene. “The double garage was well alight and the cause of the fire was undetermined. Another fire engine arrived shortly after the first responders and it assisted in extinguishing the fire quickly and easily,” she said.

Radebe concluded that no one was injured in the incident.

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