It has been the busiest fire season on record according to the Cape Winelands District Municipality and I am sure many of you can from personal experience agree with that. Extreme fire behaviour has been noted on many occasions with the top being taken by Hawequa where 14 structures in 1 night where lost and the fire tornado at Kylemore. Therefore we will add some things this issue about lessons learnt.
Here are some of the statistics so far:
- over 1100 fires attend Nov-Feb by CWDM alone, ie. not counting the fires attended to by the Local Municipalities while CWDM was stretched to the limit.
- 12 of these fires (including numerous at Hawequa/Du Toitskloof and Banghoek areas) had the Incident Management Team of CWDM activated, which includes the WFPA staff.
- Over R10 Million has been spent by the CWDM on firefighting Nov-Jan.
CWDM would also like to thank all the landowners for their assistance and commented on the commitment by landowners improving from previous years. We as the WFPA want to particularly thank our leaders who stood up and took control, some of whom you can be sure to find involved at most fires in their areas. |