Fire at sugar mill in Komatipoort finally extinguished
"The helicopter dropped a near total of 1.4 million litres of water onto the warehouse fire."
After more than a week, the fire at the sugar mill in Komatipoort has been extinguished on October 14 at 21:00. The Nkomazi Fire Department and Mbombela Fire Department have been struggling with the fire since it had started on Tuesday October 5 at 02:00.
When the fire started in the warehouse early last Tuesday morning, the fire departments spent three hours to prevent the fire from spreading further into the rest of the facilities and had it under some control. On Sunday October 10, the fire flared up again, and the firefighters have been battling to try and douse the flames ever since.
The Lowveld and Escarpment Fire Protection Association (Lefpa) arrived at the mill on Monday to lend aid. André Scheepers, the manager of Lefpa, was the coordinator. A Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter of Leading Edge Aviation had been contracted by Lefpa to drop thousands of litres of water onto the fire.
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On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, the helicopter had dropped more than 550 loads onto the storage warehouse, with one load consisting of 2 500 litres. On Wednesday, Frits Koekemoer of Nkomazi Security Solutions was invited to structure a new strategy with Scheepers and a new operational plan was developed.
“The helicopter dropped a near total of 1.4 million litres of water onto the warehouse fire, and we do not know the total amount of litres that were used by the ground troops to completely extinguish the fire,” said Scheepers.
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The fire departments used foam to cover the warehouse on Thursday to prevent the fire from starting again. As they were able to enter the warehouse, what was left of the fire was put out.
