Berea tenants lose everything in fire

“I AM stuck. I cannot go anywhere. I lost everything in that fire.”

So said an emotional Lungelo Bangani, a tenant at a block of the flats on Noble Road, opposite Berea centre, which was damaged when it was engulfed in flames after a fire broke out in the building last month.

“I have lost all of my clothing. I am only left with the clothes I am wearing now.”

“I have lost all my certificates including my driver’s license and because of my current financial position, there is nothing I can do. We still do not know what was the cause [of the fire] because I was not here when it happened,” he said, adding that he was appealing to the community to help him with donations of clothing.

Pensioner and owner of the flat, Lumka Xantibe who bought the flat in 2009, said even though the flat was completely destroyed by the fire, some of her tenants which include students, have refused to move because there’s nowhere for them to go.

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“Most of my tenants are students and some are currently doing their in-service training. As you can see we have even tried to paint and put some white papers on the walls, just to brighten the room. I have tried to also clean where I can, just to make the place more habitable for them but my age doesn’t allow me to do hard labour. I feel like this thing has been following me, because not so long ago my house in Kokstad also burned down,” she said.

“I am just grateful that no lives were lost, although there was a tenant [here] when the fire started [but] he manged to escape. What saddens me the most is that Lungelo had moved in days before the fire and has lost all his belongings. As a parent I decided to call the Berea Mail because they did the first story and also to highlight the plight of these students. Insurance will take care of the building but I am appealing to anyone out there to help these kids because they have nothing,” added Xantibe.

Meanwhile, several buildings in the city, used for student accommodation have burned down since the beginning of the year. 300 hundred students from the Durban University of Technology (DUT) were moved to another residence, after a fire burned through parts of an off-campus building on Durban’s St Georges Street last month. A woman was rescued after she became trapped in her room.

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