Image: Supplied
Faizel Patel – 02/03/2021
The CEO of privately owned firefighting operation, Fire Ops SA says the city of Johannesburg ought to have an excess of at least 110 fire engines to assist residents in case of an emergency.
Wynand Engelbrecht who was a former Midrand fire chief was speaking to Radio Islam about a report in the Rapport newspaper about the city only having one working fire truck.
The city of Cape Town meanwhile invested in a 133 new fire trucks over the last two years to bolster and ultimately replacing its current fleet.
Engelbrecht says the city’s other fire trucks are in workshops and scrapyards.
“They’ve got thirty fire stations. Now you can imagine that if you have a fire station at least, there should be one fire engine in each and then one specialised vehicle. So just the thirty-five stations alone, there should be thirty engines at least. But they spread over the city and they are in the backyards of workshops that are no longer open.”
Engelbrecht besides fire engines, the city does not even have rescue vehicles.
“They cannot extricate victims from car wrecks which my little operation; we do at least one and sometimes two to three extrications on any given day. That’s how busy the city is.”
Engelbrecht says he has approached the city to assist with emergencies on a short-term basis while it finds solutions to the dire problem is it currently facing.
Listen to the interview with Wynand Engelbrecht
0 Comments