SANParks blamed by groups for ignoring mountain vagrant fires over the years
By Shakirah Thebus
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Cape Town - Mountain-user groups have pointed a finger at SA National Parks (SANParks) for allowing vagrants to start fires that eventually led to the latest Table Mountain blaze, despite numerous reports about vagrant fires over the years.
Table Mountain Watch (TMW), a collective of concerned residents, said SANParks had been repeatedly warned of the threat posed by these fires, coupled with the mismanagement of vegetation.
TMW head André Van Schalkwyk said: “As park users, we have alerted SANParks to locations, incidents, evidence of where indigent people camp in the park – on countless occasions and over many, many years. It makes no sense to conveniently blame vagrants when, as a state-owned enterprise, they’ve done very little to address the problem.”
City of Cape Town ‘to focus on investigations’ once fires have been extinguished Updated
Sibahle Motha
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The City of Cape Town says it will only focus on the investigation into the cause of this week’s runaway fires once they have all been extinguished.
AFP
The city held a press briefing on Tuesday to provide an update on its plans to contain the fire, which has been raging since Sunday.
Acting Chief Fire Officer Clinton Manuel says the city s priority is to douse all the blazes still raging. We will do a damage assessment once we ve got our operational teams off the ground. We ve got a team that will go in and do a damage assessment. We also need it for our statistical purposes.