31st August, 2023
At least 64 people were killed and 43 injured on Thursday in a fire that engulfed a five-storey building housing squatters in South Africa’s Johannesburg’s central business district.
The fire started overnight at about 1 a.m.
Search and rescue efforts were going on at the building located by the corner of Delvers, Alberts street.
Firefighters and emergency vehicles were at the scene, while bodies lay covered in emergency blankets
“The City of Johannesburg Emergency Management Services can confirm that the number of fatalities has gone up to 63,” RobertMulaudzi, a spokesman of the agency said on X, formerly called Twitter.
The building, according to reports had been abandoned at one stage, but people turned it into their homes.
Abandoned and broken-down buildings in the area are common and often taken over by people desperately seeking some form of accommodation. City authorities refer to them as “hijacked buildings.”
The high casualties occurred as residents of the building threw themselves out of windows to escape the blaze.
Seven of the victims were children, the youngest a 1-year-old, according to the emergency services spokesperson.
Mulaudzi said the death toll was likely to increase and more bodies were likely trapped inside the building. The fire took three hours to contain, he said, and firefighters had only worked their way through three of the building’s five floors by mid-morning.
“Over 20 years in the service, I’ve never come across something like this,” Mulaudzi said.
Search teams found 64 bodies, and the chance of anyone being found alive hours after the fire broke out was “very slim,” he said.
As many as 200 people may have been living in the building, witnesses said.
A witness who didn’t give his name told television news channel eNCA that he lived in a building next door and heard people screaming for help and shouting “We’re dying in here” when the fire started.
Mgcini Tshwaku, a local government official, said there were indications that people lit fires inside the building to keep warm in the winter cold. Officials are looking into the cause of the blaze.
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