Working on Fire, a government-funded job creation programme, has trained and employed more than 6,000 people, including high-altitude teams, to extinguish fires and clear aliens.
As the Western Cape approaches winter, it will shift its aerial resources (30 aircraft) to the north and east of SA where the fire threat looms. WoF has more than 200 bases across SA.
Aliens intensify wildfires, as does global warming. This is the main reason the “number of high and extreme fire danger days and length of the fire season” is increasing, the report The Knysna Fires of 2017: Learning from This Disaster found.
The University of Stellenbosch, the CSIR and Santam wrote the report after the 2017 fires which killed seven people, displaced thousands and burnt more than 1,000 structures. Knysna, Preston notes, was “awash with invasive aliens” before this inferno.
Besides the destruction of biodiversity and property, fire causes immense trauma from grief and suffering.
During the big fires of the southern Cape in 1998, for example, four Working for Water participants were killed while trying to flee the fire. Nine others abandoned the vehicle and fled to a river. They survived, despite little water in the river because of the invasives, but their lungs were severely singed, said Preston.
Hot conditions and ready fuel intensify fires, but they don’t kindle them.
More than half the fires in the summer of 2019/20 on Table Mountain were connected to people lighting fires for “cooking, heat and social activity, according to the Cape Peninsula Fire Protection Association’s latest report.
About a third of the 58% were blamed on “malicious origins”, and on Sunday night a suspect was arrested for arson after a second fire was set above Vredehoek on the mountain.
The Table Mountain National Park had 108 fires in the summer of 2019/20, most on Table Mountain, and Lion’s Head and Signal Hill. More than 90% were extinguished in 90 minutes.
But it is a different story if the elements are hostile. If the Cape Doctor hadn’t stopped howling across city on Wednesday, Table Mountain could still be burning, despite organised and heroic efforts by dozens of firefighting crews.
Western Cape premier Alan Winde commended fire chief Arlene Wehr for her contribution to leading the city’s responses to the fire. Based at Cape Town’s central fire station in Roeland Street, Wehr is the first woman of colour to be one of four incident responders for the city’s fire and rescue services,
On her wall is a sheet of paper listing the wind speeds and temperatures for every hour — a reminder of what humans are up against.
By Thursday, the arrow on the “Fire Danger Rating” chart, in Newlands forest below the burnt-out slopes, pointed to “moderate” green after a drop in the wind and heat. Two Working on Fire choppers stood silent in a clearing.
“Our aim now is to make sure the fire does not spread,” said Philip Prins, the fire manager for Table Mountain National Park at its command centre there, drawing a red circle with spikes on the side, uncannily like a coronavirus shape. This showed how a perimeter gets set and their crews work to confine the smouldering hotspots and sparks within it.