Lack of action and equipment a recipe for disaster

Date: 22 September 2018 By: Jo Robinson

Last Thursday, cable thieves purposely burnt down some electricity poles east of Leeu Street in Louis Trichardt, which then ignited runaway fires in the bush in the Ridgeway smallholding area.

DA Ward Councillor for Louis Trichardt Mr Brian du Plooy said that the thieves had been after the conductors at the top of the poles.

The fires were doused on Thursday but reignited the following day. Du Plooy and local farmer Ian Mc Donald reported that the fire department used only “bakkie-bed fire-fighting” equipment as no operational fire engine was available.

In the light of a further report from Ms Carika Steyn of Louis Trichardt, who reported an incident that occurred on 14 September outside the cemetery in Malherbe Street, the Zoutpansberger reached out to Vhembe District Municipality (VDM) spokesperson Mr Matodzi Ralushai for information regarding the availability of a fire truck and safety equipment for Louis Trichardt, but at the time of our going to press had received no reply.

A fire had been purposely lit on the ground outside the cemetery fence, which then jumped and set an electricity box alight. Ms Steyn phoned the fire department to report the fire, but they did not arrive at all. The fire in the box blazed away and it eventually exploded. Well over an hour later, municipal workers arrived and asked onlookers for a fire extinguisher as they did not have anything with them to quell the flames. Eventually, the fire was extinguished without the fire department’s ever arriving.

Du Plooy reported that when he contacted the municipality on Friday, and again on multiple occasions on Saturday, with requests to begin emergency work on restoring power to the area affected by the Ridgeway fires, municipal workers informed him, as well as those people affected by the outage who were phoning in, that permission had to be obtained from the director to do the work required after hours, and that permission had been declined as there was no “budget allocated for paying workers overtime”. Du Plooy was told that the work would therefore have to wait until Monday.

Du Plooy informed the newspaper that the burnt-down electricity poles constituted an emergency situation in which work should have been carried out after hours to restore power, regardless of budgets for overtime. He could not understand or explain the municipality’s refusal to do the work on the grounds of a lack of budget for overtime pay. Without power, no water could be pumped, and Du Plooy said that the huge personal losses sustained by the farmers in the area because of this one particular incident had been wholly unjustified. He said he failed to see how the municipality could continue in this fashion. Du Plooy added that the municipality was clearly incapable of doing the work required of it, and that the culture of their lying to the public and the public’s accepting this behaviour had been going on for much too long.

Local farmer Mr Ian Mc Donald said that he was shocked when he heard firefighters reply affirmatively to Du Plooy’s questioning regarding the fact that their fire engine was not working. He felt appalled at the lack of resources available to them at this point in the year. Du Plooy stated that a high risk for dangerous fires currently existed in Limpopo Province, and for this municipality to have adequate firefighting vehicles and safety equipment was therefore imperative. “Our firefighters run high enough risks in the line of duty, and for the municipality to place them in greater danger by failing to supply and maintain the basic resources that they require to save lives and property is nothing short of criminal,” said Du Plooy. He said that these municipalities (Makhado and VDM) kept on failing the people in their jurisdiction in every way.

On Tuesday, Mc Donald informed the Zoutpansberger that his electricity had still not been restored. “I’ve had to hire a generator now,” he said. “My own generator was overloaded, and I have 100 000 seedlings here that need to be watered. I’m just grateful that I have a reservoir, or they would be lost. Apart from power being restored briefly for a few hours on Friday before the fire reignited, this is our fifth day without being able to pump water,” said McDonald.

The newspaper was able to confirm that work on restoring power to the affected area had only started on Monday morning with bush clearing and the digging of holes for the new poles. The supervisor on site said that he was unaware of any new rules regarding overtime as he had not been at work on Friday or over the weekend. Du Plooy said that in this current climate of lying by a municipality clearly either incapable of or unwilling to carry out vitally important work, residents should take as much care as they can to ensure their own safety and the safety of others.

Fire restrictions are in force at this time of the year, and people are required to exercise more caution than at other times of the year. Before the rains arrive, the grass is dry and extreme caution is advised with any open fires. People are encouraged to properly extinguish or dispose of anything that can ignite further and cause destructive and dangerous fires, and not to burn anything without proper safety precautions in place. While high legal penalties await those who purposely make fires without regard for the safety and property of others, people are encouraged to use common sense when they can see that the land is dry and the rains still far away.

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Jo Robinson

Jo joined the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror in 2018 pursuing a career in journalism after many years of writing fiction and non-fiction for other sectors.

More photos... 

This electricity box outside the cemetery fence exploded after being left to burn.