/ 18 December 2005

Hundreds displaced after Cape township fire

A fire destroyed more than 100 shacks and displaced hundreds of people in the Kosovo informal settlement in Phillippi outside of Cape Town on Saturday afternoon, Cape Town emergency services said.

A control room operator, who asked not to be named, said that fire fighters had controlled the blaze and were in the process of putting out the flames.

”The fire is under control. Fire fighters are now moving rubble and damping the flames,” the man said.

”About 100 shacks were destroyed and 600 people displaced. No-one was killed in the fire.”

Early on Saturday a number of shacks were destroyed in two separate fires at the Unathi informal settlement in Old Crossroads and at Browns Farm in Phillippi.

Officials said this week that more than a hundred people had died in nearly two-thousand shack fires in Cape Town this year. – Sapa