{"id":230446,"date":"2022-07-05T04:06:17","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T02:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-three-separate-devastating-shack-fires-in-cape-town\/"},"modified":"2022-07-05T04:06:17","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T02:06:17","slug":"six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires\/","title":{"rendered":"Six children and two adults die in Cape Town shack fires"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Third%20Party\/children_who_died_in_fire.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Siblings, Leana, 9, Luciana, 4, and baby Bruce died when their home burnt down in West Bank on Saturday morning. This was one of three separate devastating shack fires in Cape Town at the weekend.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">At least six children and two adults died in three separate shack fires in different townships in Cape Town over the weekend.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Several people also sustained severe burn wounds and many others were left homeless.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">The City has previously said that it will \u201ccontinue awareness drives and other interventions to reduce the instances of fires in informal settlements\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Instead of preparing to celebrate her baby\u2019s first birthday this week, a 32-year-old mother, Elma Nyakena, from West Bank in Cape Town now has to plan his funeral. Her baby, Bruce and his sisters, Luciana aged four and Leana aged nine, died in the early hours of Saturday morning when their home burnt down.<\/p>\n<p>The children were sleeping with their grandparents when the fire started. Their step-grandfather, Derrick Van Wyk, managed to save the grandmother. He ran back into the burning shack to get the children but was unsuccessful. He sustained serious injuries and is still undergoing treatment in hospital.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI lost all my babies. I can\u2019t think straight, the only thing on my mind is the flashbacks of their lifeless bodies. I could not even hold them,\u201d said Nyakena.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy kids died a very painful death. My son Bruce will be turning one year old next Friday. I was looking forward to preparing for his birthday, not his funeral. They didn\u2019t deserve to die like this,\u201d said Nyakena who was inconsolable.<\/p>\n<p>The City of Cape Town\u2019s Fire and Rescue spokesperson Jermaine Carelse said they were alerted at 2:15am to a home on fire in Baxley Crescent on Saturday. Carelse said several other informal structures were also completely destroyed and two formal houses were damaged by the blaze.<\/p>\n<p>In a separate incident on Saturday in Nyanga, two children and their father died when their shack caught alight. Their mother was out of town at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Police spokesperson Captain Frederick Van Wyk said Nyanga police arrived at 11:30pm where firefighters were already on scene, extinguishing the fire that damaged three shacks.<\/p>\n<p>Van Wyk said the 49-year-old father and his sons, aged 12 and seven were declared dead on the scene. Three neighbours who tried to save the family also sustained burn wounds.<\/p>\n<p>Resident Sizwe Nonisi, 38, said, \u201cThe seven-year-old was found not far from the door on his stomach. I\u2019m not sure if he fell while trying to escape or what. I called him and he was not moving. I then tried to grab him but the heat was too much so I could not reach him. I stood there so helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fire and Rescue\u2019s Carelse said four informal structures were completely destroyed in this fire.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Nombulelo%20Damba\/img-20220703-wa0075-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Sizwe Nonisi from Nyanga explains how he and other neighbours tried to save a father and his two young sons when their shack was alight on Saturday. Photo: Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik<\/p>\n<p>In Philippi, a father and his six-year-old son died at Never-never informal settlement at 2am on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Resident Yoliswa Sampo said, \u201cWe watched the blaze hoping [the father] was going to come back with the child but he didn\u2019t. The mother managed to go back in, when she came back she fell to her knees crying, saying she did not see them. She was badly burnt.\u201d The mother was taken to Mitchells Plain District Hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Carelse confirmed that firefighters from Gugulethu found several informal structures alight. In total four fire fighting appliances were on scene with 19 firefighters.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe blaze was contained and extinguished by 4:30am. Several informal structures were destroyed and a number of persons were displaced,\u201d said Carelse.<\/p>\n<p>The City has previously said that it will \u201ccontinue awareness drives and other interventions to reduce the instances of fires in informal settlements\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Siblings, Leana, 9, Luciana, 4, and baby Bruce died when their home burnt down in West Bank on Saturday morning. This was one of three separate devastating shack fires in Cape Town at the weekend. At least six children and two adults died in three separate shack fires in different townships in Cape Town over [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-230446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/six-children-and-two-adults-die-in-cape-town-shack-fires.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}