CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — An investigation into a building fire that killed another 76 people in South Africa in August began Thursday and highlighted deep upheavals of poverty and neglect in parts of Africa’s richest city.
The overnight fire ripped through a five-story building in Johannesburg’s Marshalltown neighborhood, trapping many of the people living there in overcrowded conditions.
The building is believed to be one of the so-called “hijacked” constructions in Johannesburg. Authorities suspect he took it over through illegal landlords, who rented out the area to poor South Africans and foreign immigrants desperate for a place to live.
The acting head of Johannesburg’s emergency services, Rapulane Monageng, gave the first testimony of the investigation and said firefighters had not discovered chimney extinguishers in the building. All were removed from the walls, he said. A giant hose had also been removed from the chimney. It fell apart and the water pipe that fed it was changed for “domestic use,” he testified.
The building’s main chimney doors were chained and the other emergency exits were locked, and there was only one way in and out of the building, he said. The interior of the building was filled with small living spaces divided with plywood and other highly flammable fabrics and other people lived in the stairwells, hallways, and bathrooms.
“It’s mind-blowing that (people) even took a bathroom and turned it into a bedroom,” Monageng said.
Overcrowded situations and the wood used for cabins and bulkheads combine to make it an incredibly damaging fire hazard, he said.
He considers it a “ticking time bomb. “
Police opened criminal proceedings a few days after the fire, before August 31, and declared the building a crime scene, but no one has been officially charged for one of South Africa’s deadliest urban fires.
It was also learned that the building belonged to the city, but that the government had abandoned it and did not put it into operation.
The investigation was announced through South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in early September. The investigation is being overseen by a three-member committee headed by the retired Constitutional Court that rules on Sisi Khampepe and aims to determine the cause of the fire and whether anyone can be found guilty of the 76 deaths, plus at least 12 children.
More than 80 people were injured, many with broken limbs and backs after jumping out of the building’s windows to escape the fire.
The bodies of 33 of the 76 affected by the fire have yet to be claimed by their relatives and remain in a morgue in Johannesburg two months later, a spokesman for the provincial health section said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Thursday.
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