Arson suspect held after fire guts homes

A 27-year-old homeless man has been arrested for allegedly starting a fire that destroyed three houses and damaged a further four on the mountain slopes below Echo Road on Sunday, say police.

Police spokesman Warrant Officer Peter Middleton said the suspected arsonist was arrested on Sunday following the fire and the matter was being investigated.

Homeowners looked on in disbelief from the side of Simon’s Town Road as flames fuelled by gale-force winds engulfed their houses, said an eyewitness, Glen Conway.

Mr Conway said the flames spread rapidly in the strong winds and as the vegetation on the slopes burnt, rocks came tumbling down the mountain.

After an initial level-6 weather warning for Cape Town and surrounds was issued by the South African Weather Service last week, the warning was escalated to a level-9 storm warning from Saturday April 6 till Monday April 8 at noon.

Firefighters were alerted to a fire in Glencairn near Main Road just after midday on Sunday April 7, according to City Fire and Rescue Service spokesman Jermaine Carelse.

The first arriving officer called for back-up as the fire was fanned by gale-force winds and was running through properties in Echo Road.

Volunteer Wildfire Services and the Table Mountain National Park fire management team were also there, and the battle against the blaze was coordinated from an operations hub on Main Road.

Firefighters assaulted the flames across three deployment zones in an effort to save property and limit damage, said Mr Carelse.

“Firefighters also had to contend with subsequent rockfalls,” he said.

Ivan York, the owner of a self-catering holiday let in Echo Road, said all the main units were intact, but the stone cottage near the pool and boma area at the bottom of the premises had been “completely gutted”.

He said he had owned the property since 2015 and it was the first time they had been affected by a fire.

“You always think it won’t happen to you until it does. It could have been much worse if it wasn’t for the capable firefighters,” he said, adding that he was grateful that there had been no fatalities as brick and mortar could be replaced.

Henny Harwood, of Froggy Farm, who helps to run an Airbnb for a Simon’s Town Road property owner, said she and her husband had rushed to the property after seeing a video of a thatched house on fire next to it.

The neighbour was dousing flames with his hosepipe.

The owner of the Airbnb wasn’t home so they removed two gas bottles and some of the owner’s personal belongings from the house.

“Fortunately we had cleared some of the vegetation behind the property after the fires in December and had made a terrace with sandbags, which allowed the firefighters to access the back of Echo Road houses via the property,” she said.

The property was not damaged, and Ms Harwood said the firefighters had been “incredible” as they had climbed over walls and obstacles in their heavy suits carrying a fire hose.

City firefighters had their hands full at the weekend as another fire in the Lower Silvermine Wetlands kept teams busy in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Mr Carelse said that fire was reported just after midnight on Saturday.

Crews from several fire stations responded and helped with calls to evacuate residents at the Seaview Mews complex in Clovelly.

The fire was extinguished just after 3am with no damage to properties.

No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is unknown.

Following an investigation into the cause of several fires in December last year, and a fire in January that destroyed almost 73 hectares of veld on Boyes Drive above Kalk Bay, South African National Parks (SANParks) found that the fires had been set with malicious intent.

At the time, SANParks spokesperson Lauren Clayton said that 22 fires had been reported in January (“Far south fires started deliberately, says SANParks,” Echo, January 25).

In February, Kalk Bay residents had a close call when a fire, which was reported at about 2.20pm on Tuesday February 13, spread towards St James and across Boyes Drive, damaging one house (“Kalk Bay has close call with ‘hectic’ fire,” Echo, February 13). At the time, the cause of the fire was undetermined.