{"id":917689,"date":"2022-01-19T15:04:15","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T15:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/news\/2022\/01\/19\/minister-barbara-creecy-commends-over-300-firefighters-who-battled-the-kleinmond-fire\/"},"modified":"2022-01-19T15:04:15","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T15:04:15","slug":"minister-barbara-creecy-commends-over-300-firefighters-who-battled-the-kleinmond-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/01\/19\/minister-barbara-creecy-commends-over-300-firefighters-who-battled-the-kleinmond-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister Barbara Creecy commends over 300 firefighters who battled the Kleinmond fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cape Town – In the wake of the massive fire that tore through the Karwyderskraal, Arabella, Rooisand, Highlands and Heuningkloof areas last week, Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environmental Affairs (DFFE) Barbara Creecy visited Kleinmond to thank more than 300 firefighters who helped to douse the flames.<\/p>\n
Although no one was killed, the fire \u2013 which lasted six days \u2013 destroyed 5 417 hectares of vegetation and burnt one structure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Working On Fire (WOF) worked with teams from the Overberg District Municipality, Overstrand Municipality, Provincial Disaster Management, Cape Nature, and the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries to protect lives, property and infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Creecy said the WOF teams played an integral role in bringing the fire under control as numerous air and ground resources were deployed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aerial resources in last week\u2019s fire flew some 83 hours and made 590 water drops \u2013 the equivalent of 1 014 million litres of water \u2013 to help douse these fires,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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MORE ON THIS<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\nFirefighters arriving in at Arabella, Kleinmond where Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy addressed them. Picture: Working on Fire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Grabouw Forestry Support Programme (FSP) firefighter Ganya Thuto said this was the biggest fire the organisation had fought, and it attacked it aggressively until it was contained.<\/p>\n
Overberg Fire Chief Reinard Geldenhuys also commended the WOF teams.<\/p>\n
Creecy said although investigations were still under way into the cause of the blaze, indications were that it originated in the department\u2019s pine plantation in the Kleinmond area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe Fire Protection Association is compiling a fire report regarding the facts pertaining to the source of the fire. We have also enlisted the services of SANParks since they have internal capabilities to undertake an assessment of this nature,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As the loss of vegetation continued throughout the six days, municipalities, residents and conservation teams worked hard to try to save the wildlife.<\/p>\nFirefighters arriving in at Arabella, Kleinmond where Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy addressed them. Picture: Working on Fire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Overstrand Municipality mayor Annelie Rabie said: \u201cOur environmental staff and a team of volunteers are continuously looking for tortoises, chameleons, lizards, skunks and snakes to release them as soon as it is safe for them to return to their natural habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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To combat the expected wildfires due to the continued heat waves during fire season, the minister urged private landowners to take responsibility for the clearing of highly flammable alien vegetation on their property. <\/p>\n
She said the department was amending legislation to require that municipalities, private landowners and other stakeholders in wildfire-risk areas become members of local Fire Protection Associations.<\/p>\n
Cape Town – In the wake of the massive fire that tore through the Karwyderskraal, Arabella, Rooisand, Highlands and Heuningkloof areas last week, Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environmental Affairs (DFFE) Barbara Creecy visited Kleinmond to thank more than 300 firefighters who helped to douse the flames. Although no one was killed, the fire \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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