One of the victims of the fire that raged on the mountain above Cape Town through Tuesday night has died, the Western Cape health department said on Wednesday.
Spokesperson Faiza Steyn said a homeless man who was rescued, badly burned, from the bushy slopes of Devil’s Peak, died at 2.30pm on
Wednesday at Groote Schuur Hospital.
Although she was unable to release his name, he was identified in earlier news reports as Raymond Johnson.
Steyn said the man’s wife, who was also rescued from the fire, was in a critical condition in the specialist burns unit at Tygerberg Hospital.
Table Mountain National Park, city and volunteer firefighters battled through the night after the blaze broke out in the vicinity of Rhodes Memorial at about 8pm.
Scores of residents of homes bordering the park were evacuated during the night as a precautionary measure, but later allowed to
return.
Several roads were closed due to thick smoke.
Park fire chief Philip Prins said on Wednesday morning that the fire was ”quiet” and ”not looking too bad”.
”It still is more or less contained,” he said on Wednesday afternoon. ”So far the perimeters are more or less safe.”
There was no real threat to homes.
”But if the wind picks up it’s a complete different story,” he said.
Helicopters would continue water bombing a high ridge on the flank of the peak, and there was still a lot of smoke in the area of lower Groote Schuur estate.
Prins said about 500 hectares of park land had been burned: some fynbos, some renosterveld, some grass, and stands of pine trees.
Four helicopters, including a defence force Oryx, were called in at dawn to water-bomb the fire, and to lift a team of firefighters high onto the mountain.
Prins said the few black wildebeest still in the game enclosure below Rhodes Memorial, plus a handful of zebras, were ”fine”.
Greg Pillay, head of the City of Cape Town’s disaster risk management centre, said five firefighters sustained minor injuries including a fractured finger and sprained ankle. — Sapa