Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD) spokesperson Xolani Fihle has warned motorists to avoid the Johannesburg CBD as emergency services are still at the devastating scene where a fire gutted a five-storey building at the corner of Alberts and Delvers Street in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Fihle said that a number of roads around the area have been closed to traffic to accommodate emergency services vehicles and disaster management services. He warned motorists and the general public to avoid the area.
The death toll from the #JoburgFire in the Johannesburg CBD has already exceeded that of the Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017, which captured the world's attention. This is a massive tragedy.
— Stephen Horn (@SteveSince91) August 31, 2023
Joburg CBD Fire disaster is ‘not surprising at all’
Johannesburg property owners and managers say the fire that gutted a hijacked building in the CBD on Thursday “is not surprising at all”.
In fact, there was another fire in a hijacked building on the corner of Kerk and Troye streets last week, on August 24; no lives were lost so there was no media attention.
This morning’s fire has so far claimed the lives of more than 70 people.
Angela Rivers, general manager of the Johannesburg Property Owners and Managers Association (JPOMA), says the majority of fires in hijacked buildings occur for two reasons: illegal electricity connections, and people starting fires within the building to cook due to electricity being disconnected.
In this particular Johannesburg CBD building in Marshalltown, the hijackers had built individual shacks within the floors. In many hijacked buildings, Rivers says the residents use office partitions to build walls, and these are obviously highly flammable.
NGOs block efforts to remove people from hijacked buildings
City of Joburg’s Council Speaker Colleen Makhubele has visited the site where at last count, 73 people died during an inferno at a hijacked building in downtown Johannesburg on Thursday morning.
Makhubele said the scourge of hijacked buildings across central Joburg, illegally occupied continues to be a headache for the City as several non-governmental organisations stand with the illegal dwellers.
“I am sure you saw at some point MMC Kenny Kunene (as acting Joburg mayor that time) was dealing with the issue. He got a lot of backlash and he was taken to court for dealing with the unsafe, hijacked city that is non-compliant,” Makhubele told journalists outside the building.
MEC @NkomoNomantu is currently at the tragic scene of the Johannesburg CBD fire which has claimed over 60 lives and more than 40 people admitted for burns injuries and smoke inhalation at various hospitals in the province. pic.twitter.com/jTGcwdbQMH
— Gauteng Health (@GautengHealth) August 31, 2023
Youngest Joburg CBD Fire victim was just 18 months old
Joburg Emergency Management Services (EMS) spokesperson, Robert Mulaudzi, says out of the 73 people who died, seven were minors with the youngest being one and a half years old.
He says the cause of the fire is still unknown.
DA calls for adequate housing
Democratic Alliance (DA) Leader, John Steenhuisen said the party would continue to push for adequate housing and safer living conditions for those living in the inner city of Johannesburg.
Steenhuisen was commenting on the catastrophic fire that gutted a hijacked building in the city centre on Thursday morning, leaving more than 60 people dead so far.
“This is a catastrophe for our nation, causing unimaginable pain and suffering to innocent people,” Steenhuisen said.
The Johannesburg CBD fire is a catastrophe for our nation, causing unimaginable pain.
"The DA mourns this tragic loss. Now is the time for South Africans to stand together for better and safer living conditions for all." – John Steenhuisen, DA Leader
📲 https://t.co/OUmafTAcoM pic.twitter.com/bbNWTlI4qt
— Democratic Alliance (@Our_DA) August 31, 2023
As far as I am concerned, this was an accident bound to happen. When I brought this potential tragedy to South Africans, some people and so-called Human Rights Lawyers unleashed insults and name-calling against me, including the ANC reporting me to the SAHRC. https://t.co/1xkFeI5lFM
— Herman Mashaba (@HermanMashaba) August 31, 2023
Joburg CBD Fire: Inside the dilapidated hijacked buildings that sprawl the Johannesburg city centre
The Johannesburg Property Owners and Managers Association (JPOMA) has called on the City of Joburg to act against those who have hijacked buildings in the inner city, plunged them into squalor and turning them into crime hotspots.
According to Angela Rivers, the association’s general manager, the issue has escalated over the past few years to the point where their members seek advice on a weekly basis about how to protect their tenants and their businesses. The association represents most of the landlords in Johannesburg’s inner city.
While the death toll from the inferno which gutted a hijacked building in the Joburg CBD on Thursday continues to escalate, City of Johannesburg’s Emergency Management Services (EMS) were faced with the sordid reality of carrying charred bodies out of the building.
“It is a sad day indeed in the City of Johannesburg,” Joburg EMS spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said speaking to broadcaster Newzroom Afrika at the scene.
By 10.30 on Thursday, the revised death toll showed that at least 73 bodies have been removed from the gutted building. One of the deceased people is a toddler.
Mulaudzi said in his decades of serving in the emergency service, he had not seen such a harrowing scene.
It is like an informal settlement
City of Joburg’s EMS spokesperson, Robert Mulaudzi said the fire had been extinguished and emergency services had begun a search and recovery in the five-storey residential building.
“At this stage, the number of fatalities might increase. Since we have stopped firefighting operations, the fire has been extinguished, we are doing what we call search and recovery, just to make sure that each and every floor is checked for bodies,” Mulaudzi said speaking to broadcaster Newzroom Afrika from the scene.
“You will understand that it is like an informal settlement, inside a building. So we have to go through all the debris inside the building, floor by floor to make sure that we can be able to recover more bodies out of this fire incident.”
