A blazing fire was seen on Saturday afternoon, from as far as 50km away.
A tyre pre-processing depot was caught up in a roaring blaze in Grootvaly Agricultural Holdings, on Saturday evening.
The yard was filled with an enormous number of different sized recycled tyres.
Pieter Rudolph, spokesman for the Ekurhuleni Emergency Services, said on Sunday that the blaze was brought under control during the night.
He adds that they needed to open the pile of tyres, which had to be doused with water to eliminate the cinder that was beneath the rubber.
“Emergency services personnel worked throughout the night to control the blaze and make sure that it didn’t spread,” he explains.
Rudolph says that water needed to be shuttled from far away, as there was no water source on the property.
He explains that the tyre yard was recycling old tyres by removing the wire from them and storing them for recycling purposes.
Stacy Davidson, director at the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (Redisa), which manages the recycling depots, says that the fire did not start due to any negligence on site.
Redisa manages the recycling depots across South Africa.
She adds that it has been confirmed that a veld fire next to the depot was spurred on by the wind and ignited the tyre stock in the yard.
“The fire broke out at around 3pm that afternoon and we have done very well to have been able to contain the fire by 6pm,” she says.
“We were also told by the Emergency Services that it is fire season.”
Davidson says they started doing audits at all their sites on Monday, having the vegetation around the depots looked at, so another instance like this doesn’t occur again.
“We are turning waste product into something worthwhile, it’s not just lying around in a field where it may cause major damage and burn for weeks,” she says.
She adds that because the tyres were oil-based, the fire had to be smouldered out.
Residents from all over Springs came to witness the cause of the vast amount of smoke in the sky.
Eben Erasmus, who lives in Selcourt, says he saw the smoke all the way from Sebenza, which he adds is approximately 50km away.
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