By Annisa Essack
11:02:2022

At least seven shops burned down on Thursday evening following a building fire in Durban central’s AB Xuma (Commercial) Street. The shops include a salon, internet café, butchery, pawnshop, spaza, and retail.

According to the acting divisional commander of the eThekwini fire and emergency, Sifiso Mbatha, there were no injuries or fatalities reported because of the fire.

“When the first responding ambulance got here, the first floor was well alight. There was also a lot of people on the ground and goods in the building, but Metro Police came and moved the people,” he said.

“We managed to deploy [water] hoses to all the spheres of the building, and we tried to prevent the fire from escaping into the other buildings. We had two teams that went inside to fight the fire.”

The fire was contained at around 10 pm, with adjacent buildings being saved from damage. It is understood that most of the shops that burned down belonged to foreign nationals,

Safari Balemba, a Congolese national and owner of the burned down Safe Solutions Computers, said he lost about 36 computers in the fire, including those that belonged to his clients. His shop was closed when the fire began.

The second floor was gutted and had collapsed by Friday. According to Balemba, the second floor of the building was used as a storage site for many street vendors who sell items in Durban central.

Mbatha said investigations were underway to determine the cause of the fire.

Amid the operations on Friday morning, as business owners were trying to salvage items from their burned down shops, they had to deal with looters who had descended onto the site for scrap and metal.