A sidewalk observer who rescued a baby dramatically in Johannesburg’s CBD on Wednesday deserves every bit of praise and an award, Democratic Alliance inner-city councillor Ann Barnes said on Thursday.
Passer-by Michael Ndlovu caught the eight-month-old baby after it was thrust from the fifth floor of a burning block of flats on the corner of Wolmarans and Twist streets.
Said Barnes: ”The number of hands that helped out when Lorna Court caught fire makes me proud to be a Jo’burger.
”Whilst I wouldn’t encourage throwing children from the building in every fire, the fact that there were hands to catch shows just how courageous people can be when pressed.”
The body of an adult was discovered in the building after the fire, which broke out at about noon on Wednesday, emergency services said.
”Tenants at Lorna flats say the person found lived there. We now understand that the fire broke out after two people argued over something,” spokesperson Malcolm Midgley said.
According to The Star, the argument was a lovers’ tiff.
Beeld reported on Thursday that two people were seriously injured when they jumped out of the burning building. One of them was the woman involved in the argument that led to the fire, it quoted ER24 emergency services’ Werner Vermaak as saying.
Two children were rescued from the burning building and taken to hospital, Midgley said on Wednesday. The children, one of them disabled and found locked inside a flat in the building, were led out of the flat under a mattress.
A firefighter was also injured by a ladder he was using to reach the top of the building, The Star reported.