Death toll rises to 30 in South African bush fires
Copyright 2001 Reuters
September 07, 2001
By Sue Thomas, Reuters
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — At least 30 people, including six children, have died in bush fires fanned by high winds across South Africa's bushveld over the past two days, police said this week.
The death toll in a fire that raged through Kruger National Park in the country's northeast on Tuesday and Wednesday rose to 21 after one man died of burns in the hospital overnight and a woman died early on Thursday, the hospital manager said.
Two men remained in the hospital, Nelspruit Medi-Clinic manager Sarel van der Walt said. "Their condition is still very critical but stable," he said.
The Kruger fire, which started on Tuesday and petered out by Wednesday night, killed 17 villagers and four game rangers who died trying to save them. The villagers, who had been hired to cut thatching grass in the 20,000-square-km (7,720-square-mile) nature reserve, died as they tried to escape the blaze that engulfed the temporary camp set up to house them.
Nine more people died in two separate bush fires fanned by strong winds in KwaZulu-Natal province, about 300 km (185 miles) from the Kruger Park fire, late on Wednesday, police spokesman Bala Naidoo said.
Six children and an elderly woman burned to death in their house near Charlestown in the northern part of the province as a bush fire raged out of control, Naidoo said.
Two people died in their car while trying to drive through heavy smoke caused by a bush fire on the road between Vryheid and Dundee. Two passengers in the car were admitted to hospital in critical condition.
WEATHER WATCH
Naidoo said the flames had been brought under control and there were no new reports of fires. "But it's still very warm and windy. I hope the wind doesn't get any stronger," he said.
The cause of the fires is still unknown, but tinder-box conditions and seasonal high winds in northeastern parts of South Africa have led weather authorities to issue fire warnings.
"The eastern part of the country is abnormally dry and with the warmer temperatures as we approach summer, and strong winds it makes it a very dangerous situation," said David de Villiers, deputy director of forecasting at the national weather bureau.
As the bushveld withered under scorching heat, the Western Cape was lashed by some of the worst storms in decades, bringing renewed misery to about 35,000 people in informal shanty settlements and driving two ships ashore off Cape Town.
"The weather system that produces rain in the Cape produces no rain in the eastern parts. If the southwestern tip of the country is getting lots of rain then the rest of the country will have dry conditions," De Villiers said.