Everson Luhanga
The city of Johannesburg’s fire response is in deep crisis.
There are shortages of fire engines and some of those that are available are said to be in bad condition and need to be serviced.
In an interview with Scrolla.Africa, EMS spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi confirmed that the city has only 15 fire engines and 30 fire stations. There are 5km between stations.
Mulaudzi said sometimes Johannesburg relies on getting assistance from neighbouring metros like Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, depending on the distance of the reported incident.
“The whole of Soweto is serviced by one fire engine and sometimes it becomes hard to respond to incidents of fire in case such incidents happen simultaneously,” he said.
Mulaudzi said the city was supposed to get 30 more fire engines during the last financial year but the contractor that was supposed to render the service cancelled the deal.
“We are now hoping that the current process of getting more vehicles, that would include the fire engines, will go well and if so, we are expecting to have engines next year in June,” he said.
Meanwhile, EMS has been receiving increased calls for help to fight fires due to load shedding. “Because people are in the dark, they tend to use unsafe lighting devices that sometimes are left unattended.
“Some incidents are caused when the power comes back with high voltage that sometimes damages the appliances or even causes a fire in residential areas. We are struggling,” he said.
