JOHANNESBURG, March 4 — Fires raged in Cape Town’s South Peninsula for a fourth day with firefighters trying to contain the blaze on Chapman’s Peak, Noordhoek and Tokai forest, near some of South Africa’s oldest wine farms.
The fire razed part of the South African National Parks offices in Tokai, on the eastern slope of Table Mountain, and staff have been evacuated, Linton Rensburg, a spokesman for Working on Fire, the national fire management agency, said by phone yesterday.
Eight houses have been damaged in the past few hours, the South African Press Association reported, citing Charlotte Powell, a spokeswoman for Cape Town Disaster Risk Management. One of the houses was in Noordhoek, two in Tokai, one on the Steenberg Golf Estate and four in Klein Constantia, Sapa said. Three hundred people have been evacuated.
“It’s been a very difficult night,” Rensburg said. “We’ve been dealing with multiple flare-ups. Our main concern now is the Tokai area.”
The fire threatened some wine farms in the Constantia valley, with vineyards, which are in the midst of harvesting, suffering smoke and heat damage. At Buitenverwachting, a forest and one vineyard were destroyed, said Lars Maack, one of the owners of the farm.
“Yesterday it was really close, and we’re not out of the woods yet,” Maack said by phone. “We’re focusing now on saving the farm.”
Luxury lodge
About 200 firefighters were battling the blazes, assisted by four water-bombing helicopters, Rensburg said. Another 150 firefighters were flown in from other parts of South Africa and will join the effort.
Tokai forest, where the fire spread yesterday morning, is part of Cape Town’s Table Mountain National Park. Thick smoke covered the adjoining Cape Town suburbs of Claremont, Newlands and Bishopscourt.
Since the fire started on March 1, at least 30 houses in Noordhoek have been evacuated as well as residents of a retirement village and an old age home, the city said. Five houses in Noordhoek were also damaged as well as the Tintswalo luxury lodge. — Bloomberg
