More than 70 people were killed overnight when a fire raged through a run-down, five-storey Johannesburg apartment block, one of the worst such disasters in a city where poverty, household fires and homelessness are widespread.
The building was gutted, blackened by soot and still smouldering on Thursday as emergency services gathered around it and bodies lay covered in blankets on a nearby street.
The block is owned by municipal authorities who, more than 12 hours after the blaze broke out, were still unable to provide a clear picture of who had lived there. One official said some rooms may have been rented out by criminal gangs in a so-called “hijacked building“.
I saw a guy jumping from the fourth floor and he lost his
life on the spot,” student Thando le Nkosi Manzini told Reuters.
Survivor Omar Arafat used his T-shirt to wipe away tears as he recounted losing his 21-year-old sister in the fire that he managed to escape.
“I broke the window … and when I fell down, I was like ‘I am dead’,” he told Reuters, adding that another sister was in hospital and the family had lost all their possessions.
Thembalethu Mpahlaza, a provincial official for Forensic Pathology Services, said 74 bodies had been retrieved, 12 of whom were children and 24 of them women.
Authorities earlier said more than 50 people were being treated for injuries.
“This is a great tragedy felt by families whose loved ones perished in this terrible manner,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in televised remarks. “I do hope that the investigations into the fire will … prevent a repeat of such a tragedy.”
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