The City of Cape Town’s Fire and Rescue service is adopting a new modus operandi to tackle fires this fire season. This is the time of year where wildfires take centre stage in the Mother City, which has prompted authorities to find new ways at addressing firefighting efforts.
During the 2023/24 fire season, the municipality recorded 9132 open-area vegetation fires. To help reduce the high number of fires, the city’s new strategy involves what is called ‘strike teams’ that will use smaller 4×4 response vehicles to respond to incidents faster and in rugged terrain.
On Saturday, firefighters managed to contain a blaze that out along Chapman’s Peak just before the lookout point near the tollgate. By Sunday afternoon, firefighters from the Cape Winelands and Drakenstein municipalities were still hard at work to contain a fire that emerged in the mountainous area in Paarl.
“We are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at our fire readiness programme, but we need the same energy from our residents. It bears repeating that fire safety is everyone’s business. Consider your actions at all times, whether making a braai fire or how you put out your cigarette. If you spot any sign of fire, report it immediately. If you spot anyone behaving in a suspicious manner, especially in our mountainous areas, report it,” emphasized Safety and Security MMC JP Smith.
The Fire and Rescue service already has an operational fleet of more than 200 vehicles, including 73 fire appliances, 27 water tenders, four heavy technical rescue units, 10 aerial appliances and seven water craft.
“Vegetation fires tend to expand rapidly and our larger, major pump fire engines require a lot more effort to relocate or catch up to rapidly developing fire lines, that have changed direction. These new strike teams are very agile and can react and redeploy within seconds. The strike team will be instantly on it, thus ensuring we are able to bring fires under control a lot quicker and preventing them from becoming large-scale incidents,” explained Chief Fire Officer Clinton Manuel.
