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Worst fires in 7 years

───   17:17 Mon, 15 Sep 2014

Worst fires in 7 years | News Article

Bloemfontein - Working on Fire, the Department of Environmental Affair’s Expanded Public Works Programme to help fight unwanted veld and forest fires in South Africa has been hard at work: fighting 1679 fires between June and August 2014.

This current winter fire season is the worst the country has experienced in the past seven years with a massive increase of 40% on the 2013 fire statistics. In the same reporting period during the 2013 Winter Fire Season, WoF fire fighters successfully fought 1197 fires.

Despite many flare-ups across the country, close to 5000 WoF fire fighters stationed at 200 bases in these high risk fire areas across the country, managed to limit the areas burnt to 357,000 ha, which represents a 70% increase in hectares burnt in 2013. These ground forces were well supported by the WoF aerial support teams which are made up of spotter planes, helicopters and bomber aircraft.

KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape experienced some of the most deadly fires in which several people were killed, many farms and homes were destroyed and 1000’s of cattle were killed. These fires occurred in the Kokstad area (KZN) and the Alfred Nzo Region (EC) during June.

In one of the biggest fires in years in the Eastern Cape at Elandsrivier near the Baviaanskloof Mountains close to Willowmore, one fire burnt for more than a week and destroyed close to 80 000 hectares fynbos.

KwaZulu-Natal had the most number of fires (368 with 19300 ha burnt), followed by Mpumalanga (278 with 12 300 ha burnt), Gauteng (262 with 32 670 ha burnt), Eastern Cape (260 with 96 200 ha burnt), Limpopo (257 with 18 570 ha burnt), Free State (168 with 141 143 ha burnt), North West (65 with 13 000 ha burnt), Northern Cape (13 with 220 ha burnt) and the Southern Cape Region in the Western Cape (8 with 24 000 ha burnt).

In many instances these fires have been linked to prolonged periods of little or no rain, coupled with warm, dry winds. Another major factor has been the expansion of urban areas into natural veld and forest areas, thereby exposing lives and homes to fires in the neighboring veld, and simultaneously increasing the chance of veldfires being started.

South Africa is the only country in the world that has a professional veld and forest fire fighting service at its disposal.

However the WoF programme not only limits damaging fires but also contributes to addressing the scourge of poverty, crime and youth unemployment. Hailed as government's most successful Expanded Public Works Programme, WoF fire fighters, drawn from poor and destitute communities, are now highly skilled and walk tall in their bright yellow outfits.

Key to the continued success of the WoF programme is its ability to restore the dignity of the young men and women who have also been trained in professions such as carpentry, brush cutting, cooking, first aid and computer skills.

The programme has the highest ratio of women to men employed in similar fire fighting services across the world and currently stands at 29%.

WoF beneficiaries are employed all year round and apart from their fire fighting work during the fire season, they also do fire prevention initiatives such as fuel load reduction, prescribed burning, creation of fire breaks and mandatory fire safety awareness campaigns before and during the fire season.

Statement by Working on Fire

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