Turtle SA Tours

   

---

Fires in Cape Town January 2005

         The mountain side near Muizenberg after the fire had devastated it.

Tours offered by Turtle SA Tours

Are you interested in tours in and around Cape Town and the Garden Route
Click here   to book or enquire.

Over the past few months Cape Town has been experiencing severe drought conditions. Our winter was mild with very little rain and even less snow than previous years. The consequence of all this is that the dams at the beginning of the summer season were just over 60% of capacity. Very stringent water restrictions have been applied and if you drive around the streets of Cape Town you will notice gardens that were once green and lush starting to turn into dry sand beds. It's very sad to see this happen.

Over the past few weeks Cape Town has been experiencing a heat wave with temperatures soaring into the 30's C in some areas. The only relief one gets from the heat is the south east wind that buffets the Cape Peninsula during the summer months. Capetonians are used to the wind but visitors complain about it. What they don't know is that the minute it drops the temperatures soar and Cape Town becomes enveloped in smog.

These conditions lend themselves to fires and unfortunately there have been a number of them over the past few weeks. Firstly, a fire on the Tygerberg took a number of days to put out as the south east wind kept on fanning the flames. Luckily only fynbos was burnt and there was no loss of property. With the drought conditions there is not much water about and firefighters have a hard time fighting the fires without water. The helicopters have to fly long distances to the sea to fetch water and so firefighting is not as effective as it could be.

In the last two days there have been a number of large fires on Table Mountain.

Signal Hill just above the city had a fire which firefighters managed to contain and put out. They had hardly finished with that one when a fire which broke out on Monday above Boyes Drive near Muizenberg and had been controlled flared up again. It is still burning and has destroyed a number of houses and devastated the mountains around Silvermine and the mountain slopes on both sides of the Ou Kaapse Weg. This fire is burning in the same area as the terrible fire that struck the Ou Kaapse Weg area in 2000.

Firefighting has been really difficult as the fires are being fanned by gale force winds and with the bush being dry it burns easily. Helicopters were scrambled on Monday and it took them three minutes to get airborne after the call came through. They have been water bombing the fire but smoke is making their lives difficult as they are unable to see the hotspots. People living in the Tokai area were forced to evacuate their homes because of the fires which burnt through the vegetation around the houses. Ou Kaapse weg was closed as the fire raged on both sides of it on the Tokai side of the mountain.

Another view of the devastation