Firefighters were still combating a brush fire at Melkbosstrand on Monday afternoon, Cape Town’s chief fire officer, Piet Smith, said.
A helicopter and a number of fire engines were being used, he said.
Fire crews were also patrolling the Camps Bay and Sir Lowry’s Pass areas, where there were occasional flare-ups.
None of the blazes posed any immediate threat to people or property, Smith said.
The South African Weather Service warned that veld-fire conditions will on Tuesday persist over the Cape Peninsula, Boland, Swartland, Breede River Valley and West Coast.
About 200 shacks were destroyed in a fire in an informal settlement at Khayelitsha on the Cape Flats on Monday morning, Cape Town disaster-management services spokesperson John Brown said.
Disaster management personnel were still trying to verify the exact number, a task made more difficult by the fact that many occupants were away in the Eastern Cape for the festive season.
”And it always tends to be a bit chaotic on the first day of a fire,” Brown said.
He said no one was reported injured in the blaze, which began shortly after 6am and was under control by 9am.
A helicopter was used to water-bomb the fire.
There had been about six other shack fires during the night, most of them involving only one or two structures.
Probably 90% of the fires were caused by negligence, linked to the fact that many people did their cooking outside, on a brazier.
”It just needs one coal on plastic and the next minute the plastic goes,” Brown said.
The brush fire that raged over the weekend in the Blouberg/Melkbosstrand area, and which at one point threatened a caravan park and an old-age home, is now ”basically under control”.
”They’re just monitoring the area,” he said.
Ground crews will stay there to monitor hot spots for possible flare-ups. — Sapa