Plastic View residents pick up pieces
More than 400 people were left displaced including 106 women and 61 children and four people were treated on the scene. It has been a cold winter and people are trying to stay warm.
More than 400 people were displaced after 79 shacks were destroyed in a fire at the Plastic View informal settlement on Saturday morning.
This included 106 women and 61 children.
Four people were treated on the scene for their injuries.
Three were treated for smoke inhalation and one for minor facial burns, according to Tshwane emergency services spokesperson Charles Mabaso.
The night after the fire, some of the people who lost their shacks chose to stay on their small piece of land to avoid losing it to other squatters.
Active charity organisation in the area, SA Cares for Life, said women and children were accommodated in various volunteer homes and offices for shelter against the cold.
Various organisations such as LIFT also joined forces with Tshwane metro’s disaster management team to help get relief for residents.
Mattresses and toiletries were collected for the families while food and other essentials are still being received from various donors.
A bulldozer has since cleared the debris at the area and residents have started rebuilding their homes.
READ MORE: Plastic View dwellers rebuild homes after fire wreaks havoc
“It is most costly for families to rebuild their shacks. Some of them do not have an income right now to buy materials to do so,” said SA Cares for Life founder Sanet Fegan.
Fegan, who has been active at the informal settlement for several years, said the cold weather often saw people using fires to try and stay warm.
“It has really been a very cold winter and people are trying to stay warm,” she said.
Photo by Ron Sibiya
“Candles and fires in such small places can easily start a fire.”
“I can honestly say that when you experience the feeling of loss and fear as we have seen with our staff who lost their houses, it touches your heart deeply.”
The settlement, also known as Woodlane Village, has suffered multiple fires over the years that sometimes resulted in deaths.
In 2018, the informal settlement experienced three fires in a space of a month, killing one and leaving close to 1 500 people without homes
In 2016, four people died when a fire swept through the area.
Photo by Ron Sibiya
“We believe proper town planning and better structures can help to prevent these situations,” Fegan said.
Informal Settlement Forum spokesperson Jackie Botha said the forum had discussions earlier this year for possible fire detection units to be installed at the settlement.
This would assist with early fire detection and raise an alarm to residents at the settlement.
“We also had talks late last year with the Tshwane fire department for a rollout plan for 2020 on bucket brigade training, fire awareness. The idea was to train selected community members to assist with fires; however, Covid-19 put all these plans on hold,” she said.
In 2009, the Pretoria High Court made a series of orders aimed at the relocation or regularisation of the informal settlement.
Plans to move the residents to a new township called Pretorius Park extension 40, just a few meters away from the informal settlement are still in motion.
Photo by Ron Sibiya
However, not everyone living at the settlement qualified for housing as the bulk of the residents are said to be undocumented.
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