Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Disaster Strikes Cape Town: Table Mountain & Devil's Peak on Fire

Last night i had dinner at the lovely Societi Bistro with 5 friends, was delightful, just after being served complementary desserts (an assortment of all the desserts they have on the menu) as a thank you for the review i wrote about them on the eatout.co.za website (Didn't even know they read that stuff), we were told there was a huge fire on Devil's Peak and traffic was being re-directed, four our of five at dinner weren't really that bothered mainly because we all live in town and wouldnt be driving that way, but the one friend who lives Southern Suburbs way, texted a mere 10 mins later to say, the mountain was ablaze, the re-direction was not an overbearing move on the Cape Town council/authorities (excuse my ignorance as to who's responsible for this) but a necessity.
Just a month ago i wrote a heated letter to the mayor of Cape Town about these fires and all they said was, they were working on it, but never went into details about what was actually being done - i left it at that - but i love Cape Town and it affects me a lil' everytime i hear of a fire and it makes me feel like not enough is being done, not so much to prevent them, because you cant entirely prevent fires, but there aren't stringent enough strategies to conquere the fires once they break out, anyway i'm sure there's a lot i'm not aware of.

De Waal Drive was closed for traffic at 00:15.Loudhailers were used to order residents of High Cape to evacuate as flames licked at the buildings.Long queues of cars formed as residents tried to escape the inferno. Security guards were going door-to-door telling the residents to evacuate. Two people sustained third degree burns and five firefighters were injured in the blaze :-(

Main pic is of last night - the other this morning!

3 comments:

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  2. I managed to hike it up to Rhodes Memorial today and get some photos of the close-up action, including the helicopters, firefighters, and tactical command vehicles. Very cool, very smokey! Check it out:http://tinyurl.com/cptfire

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  3. Thanks Shaun, will check those out & your blog.

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