{"id":243698,"date":"2022-11-22T19:28:49","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T17:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/masiphumelele-community-struggling-to-rebuild-homes-after-devastating-fire\/"},"modified":"2022-11-22T19:28:49","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T17:28:49","slug":"masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Masiphumelele struggles to rebuild after devastating fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Lucas%20Nowicki\/600_shacks_burnt_in_masi.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Some of the nearly 2,000 people whose homes were destroyed in a fire on Monday in Masiphumelele have started clearing and trying to rebuild. Photos: Lucas Nowicki<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>About 1,800 people were left homeless on Monday when a fire in Z-section destroyed about 600 shacks in Masiphumelele.<\/li>\n<li>This was the second fire in less than a month in the township. On 31 October, a fire destroyed 309 shacks and left more than 600 people homeless.<\/li>\n<li>Many people have started clearing their plots to rebuild their homes. In the meantime, hundreds of families are still sleeping in the community hall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cWe were home when the fire started. We didn\u2019t think it would reach us but it travelled so fast. It was traumatic,\u201d says 33-year-old Zikhona Mkuba. She is among about 1,800 people whose belongings were destroyed in a massive fire that ripped through about 600 shacks in Z-section of Masiphumelele in Cape Town on Monday.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>This was also the second fire in less than a month in the township. On 31 October, a<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymaverick.co.za\/article\/2022-11-03-gift-of-the-givers-continues-support-for-610-fire-victims-in-masiphumelele\/\"> fire<\/a> destroyed 309 shacks and left more than 600 people homeless.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, GroundUp visited the area where some people were clearing their plots to rebuild their homes. But many people are still unable to buy material and other essentials.<\/p>\n<p>Mkuba, who is unemployed besides occasionally volunteering at the local clinic, shared her shack with five other family members. They lost all their belongings, including their IDs.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Lucas%20Nowicki\/zikhona_in_masi.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Zikhona Mkuba (centre) and a relative clear some of the charred zinc sheets that they could salvage from Monday\u2019s fire.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday night, organisations such as the Gift of the Givers and Living Hope provided families with food, blankets and other relief. Hundreds of families had to spend the night in the community hall. Most residents say they woke up at sunrise on Tuesday to start salvaging what remains of their homes and start rebuilding what they could.<\/p>\n<p>Another resident, Mfundo Duma, 34, says he lost his home and belongings in the fire. Duma, who is unemployed, was out looking for work when the fire started. \u201cI lost everything,\u201d said Duma while trying to rebuild his shelter on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Duma lives with his two children and sister and does not receive any government assistance like grants.<\/p>\n<p>Jermaine Carelse, spokesperson for the City of Cape Town\u2019s Fire and Rescue Service, said people first noticed the fire at about 9:40am on Monday. \u201cWhen crews responded, they found several informal structures alight. SAPS and Law Enforcement had to be called in when members of the community tried to interfere with the firefighters\u2019 work. When the fire spread to the wetlands area, additional resources were requested, and 70 firefighters with 15 firefighting appliances battled to extinguish the blaze in the wetland area of Masiphumelele.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/Lucas%20Nowicki\/masiphumelele_fire_nov.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire-2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Mankayi Masixole, 31, helps other people sort through the burnt remains of their homes. He says he was sleeping on Monday morning when the fire started. He just had time to save some clothes and his sound system. Masixole is unemployed and lives with his three children and wife. The household survives on child support grants.<\/p>\n<p>Carelse said at least two firefighters who sustained minor injuries were taken to hospital for treatment and released.<\/p>\n<p>Western Cape Police spokesman, Frederick Van Wyk, said that claims of looting in the area at the time of the fire were \u201cnot true\u201d. He said confusion erupted when some residents were trying to move their vehicles from the fire area before engines could make their way in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis caused a bit of unhappiness amongst the public and fire and rescue teams but was resolved. The cause of the fire is still unknown,\u201d said Van Wyk.<\/p>\n<p>The City\u2019s Disaster Risk Management spokesperson Sonica Lategan estimated that 600 structures and 1,800 individuals were affected by the fire. Lategan said that SASSA is expected to provide more humanitarian relief.<\/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\/11\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of the nearly 2,000 people whose homes were destroyed in a fire on Monday in Masiphumelele have started clearing and trying to rebuild. Photos: Lucas Nowicki About 1,800 people were left homeless on Monday when a fire in Z-section destroyed about 600 shacks in Masiphumelele. This was the second fire in less than a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":243699,"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-243698","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\/11\/masiphumelele-struggles-to-rebuild-after-devastating-fire.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243698","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=243698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}