Setting the Record Straight: Cape Town’s Fire and Rescue Excellence

By JP Smith

It is an old strategy to seek relevance by publicly confronting leaders by name with critical or surprising information, but it only works if your information is correct and you make sound arguments — neither of which is achieved by Cllr Roscoe Palm.

Misinformation prevents meaningful discussion of an issue, prevents insightful interrogation of the extent of the potential problem, and misdirects the solution.

When you have limited resources, good decisions require careful analysis.

In reply to Cllr Palm’s opinion piece, I must set the record straight.

Palm firstly claims that over 100 firefighters have left the Fire and Rescue department for various reasons.

A recent anonymous Facebook page also attempted to peddle the misinformation that 200 staff members had left. Clearly, Cllr Palm has carried his former lack of journalistic integrity into his new job as a politician.

Fire & Rescue Service currently has 19 vacancies, according to the latest Safety & Security Portfolio Committee report. This turnover is due to staff retiring, moving to other posts or the private sector, and some leaving South Africa for lucrative job opportunities in the Middle East.

The City of Cape Town’s Fire service trains and certifies our staff to international standards, making them desirable for the Middle East and elsewhere.

It should be noted that for the summer season, we will have an additional 96 seasonal firefighters and our aerial support as of December 1.

In addition, the City has heavily invested in its Fire and Rescue Service. Cape Town has 32 fire stations — Sir Lowry’s Pass and Kommetjie Road were the latest to open their doors in 2021 and 2020, respectively. Work is expected to start on a 33rd fire station in Langa soon.

Daily, fire stations have at least 240 firefighters on operational duty, excluding the Incident Management Teams on standby for major incidents.

The Fire & Rescue Service has an operational fleet of more than 200 vehicles, including 73 fire appliances, 27 water tenders, four heavy technical rescue units, 10 aerial appliances, and seven watercraft.

There is no doubt that we have the best-equipped fire service in the country if not the continent. However, this does not mean that we are satisfied with its state of resources.

I wrote to the Mayor, Chief Financial Officer, and the ED of Safety and Security during the budget planning process to advocate for much-needed resource growth, a request I’m confident will be met favourably.

It might serve Cllr Palm well to do some homework next time he plans to share his opinion. I note that he is new to the council, and a lesson he will learn in time is that disgruntled city officials can easily dupe politicians into doing their dirty work for them. Without understanding the implications of complex operational matters, councillors should not seek to advertise the one convenient opinion they are given as gospel.

Cllr Palm’s ignorance of the facts is evident in his claim that the Goodwood station will respond to Constantia's emergencies. I hope that during his oversight visits, he will realise that there are stations in Wynberg and Hout Bay.

Goodwood hosts all our specialised vehicles, which have assisted during the George building collapse, the KZN floods, and in Drakenstein more recently.

Perhaps during his oversight visits, he can also learn that the pumpers at the training college are used for driver pump operator training, which Fire can supply to international standards.

As for the medical response vehicles, our core responsibility is firefighting, which means we must have at least one fire engine on run at every fire station.

It still is the responsibility of provincial Metro EMS to provide medical care to patients, despite the City’s willingness to step in wherever we can help.

Cllr Palm’s theory that LEAP is generating revenue and therefore receiving preference is laughable.

LEAP is deployed to do crime prevention in the worst affected precincts and works to support SAPS. The Law Enforcement officers in LEAP “generate” no revenue due to their focus on violent crime.

Palm's exaggerated view of the Fire response capacity exposes his lack of knowledge about Fire and Rescue. His ignorance is however dangerous when it informs the possible decision-making of others based on his lack of knowledge.

Cape Town has by far the best-capacitated and best-resourced fire and rescue service in South Africa — by a very large margin. The City of Cape Town can boast as many as 32 major pumpers on run on any given day. In comparison, other metros can only run a fraction of that, and in most cases, civil society and the private sector have taken over the responsibility.

Residents of Cape Town can be assured that their safety is in the right hands.

* JP Smith is the Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security in the City of Cape Town.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.