Reports by Marianne Merten
Helicopters scampering over the blazing vineyards of Constantia became the “motif” of the Cape of Storms this week as the Peninsula burst into flames producing scenes that could have been staged for a mega disaster movie.
>From the beaches of Muizenberg columns of smoke rising above the mountains behind Scarborough and Simon’s Town looked like Mount Vesuvius in full rage burying the fleeing victims of Pompeii.
In the blood-red light of the sun glowering through the pall of destruction cars are locked bumper to bumper for miles as motorists anxiously tune in to local radio stations to hear if their suburbs have been hit by the walls of flame which angrily stalk the picture-postcard countryside.
Around them sirens sound to flashing lights and glimpses of fire engines, water-tanker yellow and police blue as emergency vehicles hurtle to crisis points and rendezvous.
Emergency workers broadcast appeals to residents of South Africa’s prime mink and manure belt to call off the furniture removal vans summoned to evacuate their mansions, because the chaos they are creating is frustrating emergency vehicles as they race to try and save Constantia.
Five houses in Price Drive and three homes in Bel Air Drive are gutted, the Forget-Me- Nots florist reduced to a burnt-out shell.
Buckets, garden hosepipes, anything which could contain water, are used to save homes. Pets, toys and important documents are packed up and shipped out away from the flames.
Neighbours rush in to help pack up. A radio reporter describes weeping schoolgirls running backwards and forwards in distress as the fire edges closer to their homes – fresh-faced innocence unhinged by the rude assaults on childhood certainty.
News announcements that the Mother City has been racking up record high temperatures – the mercury touching 41,3C – produce not hot pride, but shivers of apprehension at the realisation of how the fairest Cape has been reduced to a simple tinderbox by metereological caprice.
Overhead the tiny helicopters buzz mosquito- like against the sky, heroic in purpose, but only adding to the sense of helplessness as they dash their toyish, boyish waterbombs against the mad advance of lunatic flames.
In Simon’s Town the flames mount an assault on naval headquarters. The base commander, Ricky Groome, and his family join the homeless statistics as their house is razed, the naval band losing many of its instruments to the inferno.
Air force helicopters repeatedly manoeuvre the large “bambi bucket” dangling underneath the aircraft into the ocean and dump two tons of water each time they fly directly into the smoke over the town.
A water pipe bursts, flooding the main road. A group of sweaty council workers take a break from clearing the mud off the road. It’s well into the night. Just on the other side everything has burnt black.
Homeowners along Red Hill and Cable Hill spend an anxious night. Metres away bright orange coals continue to glow, ready to flare into flames. It looks like molten lava bursting through the brown-grey coat as you have seen in a National Geographic special.
For many navy staff it is back to work after a couple of hours rest. Leave and rest days for sailors remain cancelled as it is all hands on deck to fight the fires. Only days before it had been the turn of the soldiers nearby. When flames threaten a base, everyone from kitchen staff to the top brass takes on the fiery enemy.
At night the flames continue to roar bright orange into the sky. Many other parts of the mountains glow like the embers of a giant braai.
Above Sun Valley a white blanket of smoke billows into the sky under the full moon. The hot orange flames move in single file across the mountain in stark contrast to the night sky. Below, the red lights of the fire engines flash. Between the two, thick vegetation smoulders beneath the burnt skeletons of trees and charred cliff face.
In the early hours of Thursday morning exhausted, grimy firefighters rush from one outbreak to another in the extreme heat of the dozens of blazes wracking the area. The fires toy with their efforts to control them.
Extra ambulance crew have been summoned from Somerset West, Stellenbosch and Paarl. Additional air force helicopter pilots arrived from Pretoria.
Many of the exhausted policemen have been on duty for more than 18 hours. Sore lungs, itchy eyes and blistered feet. But there is no remedy for fatigue.
As the destruction becomes visible in the early-morning light, the impact of the blazes hits home. The veld is charred black and the rock face looks grey. Still little flames lick the bottom of trees in hundreds of places.
There is little time to think about costs, not just of the fire-fighting, but also the rebuilding of homes and regenerating the natural environment. Everyone knows it runs into millions of rands. In the City Bowl, baking in its embrace of the furnace, obscenely mocking white flakes gently fell, snowlike through the air, telling of the drama being played out behind the fabled mountain. A mountain on this occasion not quietly attired in its familiar table-cloth of flirting mist, but mounted by a silent thundercloud of smoke that testified to raging fires raping the fecund lands far below.
The thud-thud of helicopters sounds over Constantia when residents wake up on Thursday morning. The rasp of chainsaws drifts down the slopes, as the Mother City braces itself for another day of flames.