City of Cape Town assessing damages caused by recent fires

Jaimie-faith Poonah
17 March 2015

The City of Cape Town is busy assessing the damages and the cost of the fires that ripped through the South Peninsula two weeks ago.

The fire which lasted six days destroyed more than five-thousand hectares of vegetation and over five-hundred people had to be evacuated from their homes.

City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith said they estimate that the damages would be about six-million-Rand.

Smith said the number of fatalities as a result of fires has decreased from last year. This was the largest mountain fire we had in 15 years and it came at a time when the whole of the fire season has been extremely busy.

Smith said we had 7 500 vegetation fires and 1 600 structural fires between the 1^st of November last year and the 12^th of March this year over this fire season compared to last season. We can see that the growth has grown quite considerably.