A fire that killed at least 74 people in a five-storey building in central Johannesburg on Thursday has prompted authorities to step up efforts to tackle the acute housing crisis and address the city’s hundreds of abandoned, overcrowded buildings. grab.
It was one of the worst house fires in South Africa’s history, and on Friday morning health officials asked family members to help identify some of the dead.
Here’s what we know about the fire and the conditions surrounding it.
What happened?
It is not yet known how the fire started, but it may have started on the ground floor of the building, a building that once housed offices of the apartheid government and served as a control point for controlling the movement of black workers in and from the region. city.
Authorities have yet to determine the exact origin of the fire, but officials, experts and local residents described the overcrowded building, which was divided into a jumble of small rooms, as a fire trap and a disaster “waiting.”
Flammable materials such as cardboard and boards separated the living areas. Electrical cables dangled from the ceiling. And people living in such substandard housing in Johannesburg often have no permanent access to electricity, leaving them to rely on candles, small fires or even improvised connections to the power grid.
Health officials said at least 12 children had died in the blaze and at least 88 survivors were being treated in hospitals.
Some of the dozens of dead may have been blocked by an internal security gate as they tried to escape the blaze. Mgcini Tshwaku, a councilor who oversees public safety, said at least some of the victims were found behind a locked gate on the ground floor.
Who were the victims?
The sprawling red-brick building housed hundreds of people. Some were South Africans, others were migrants from around the region who had arrived in Johannesburg in search of a better life.
Authorities in South Africa have yet to identify many of those killed in the fire. Health officials said many victims were burned beyond recognition and DNA testing would be needed to identify these victims. Late Thursday, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, a local health official, told reporters that of those identified so far, at least two were from South Africa, two from Malawi and two from Tanzania.
Because some of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, DNA testing will be necessary to verify their identities.
What Caused the Johannesburg Housing Crisis?
After the fall of apartheid in the 1990s, which ended crippling restrictions on where black people could legally live in South Africa, many moved to cities in search of better opportunities. But there weren’t enough affordable homes to meet demand.
Around the same time, landowners began to abandon buildings in Johannesburg’s commercial center, and the structures slowly filled with poor and desperate people who could not afford anything else in the market.
Authorities now say such buildings are often ‘hijacked’ by organized groups demanding payment from those who live there.
“The lesson for us is that we have to deal with this problem and eradicate the criminal elements,” South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said Thursday night. “It is these kinds of buildings that are taken over by criminals, who then levy rent on vulnerable people and families who need and want shelter in the city center.”
According to a city official, more than 600 abandoned buildings in Johannesburg are being illegally occupied, including 30 buildings owned by the city. And the city, now its sixth mayor in less than three years, has struggled to crack down on the squatters, in part because of the legal obligation to re-house people it evicts from such spaces.
While the city council recently inspected just over a dozen such buildings as part of efforts to clear them, authorities have also cited safety concerns as obstacles to conducting checks on the structures.
Rapulane Monageng, acting chief of the city’s emergency management services, told reporters Thursday night that after a nonprofit that once rented the five-story building vacated the site, inspectors had not returned to conduct another code check. “We don’t want to end up in a hostile environment,” he said.