City launches Misa Umililo Stop the Fire campaign

1 December 2015

Each year, the summer season sees an increase in the number of fires across the city.

Too often these fires result in loss of people’s possessions, important documents, their homes and sadly the loss of lives.

This past weekend a number of fires in Masiphumelele, Joe Slovo, Khayelitsha, Wallacedene and Rylands left thousands homeless and six people lost their lives.

As part of our strategic objective to build a safe and caring city, the City conducts ongoing fire awareness and education campaigns to educate residents on the dangers of fire, as well as hazards, preventative measures and how they can work with us to reduce the risk and number of fires.

However, despite our best efforts, we are still seeing far too many fires that could have been avoided through cautious behaviour.

Each year we see the devastation to communities and unnecessary loss of life.

Our teams are on high alert and we are especially concerned about fires in informal settlements and those that affect backyarders. 

These vulnerable residents are frequently the victims of fires and suffer the worst consequences from such fires as the loss of life under these circumstances is common and they have no insurance to help them recover from the loss of their home and possessions.

Today, we launched the Misa Umlilo Stop the Fire campaign, where we are painting structures in four informal settlements with fire-retardant paint.

Khusela Ikhaya Paint is water-based, eco-friendly, fire-retardant paint which, when exposed to extreme heat, will expand to form a fire-retardant heat shield.

The paint slows down the spread of fire and will give residents more time to escape harm. It also allows the fire services to minimise the damage caused to surrounding structures. 

Structures surrounding a structure painted with fire-retardant paint are most likely to stay intact to some extent after a fire.

The City will roll out the campaign starting today, 1 December 2015, in Phumlani Village in Lotus River where 550 structures will be painted.

The initiative will also be rolled out in Pook se Bos in Rylands (136 homes), Flamingo Crescent in Lansdowne (104 homes), and Wag ’n Bietjie in Nomzamo (approximately 100 homes).

Community engagement has been conducted by officials in our Human Settlements Directorate and the Khusela Ikhaya project team who have engaged with community leaders and members with door-to-door interaction. 

This project will also see community members being employed as painters, with approximately 83 jobs created in these four areas.

The City will be spending just over R1 million to paint the homes in Phumlani Village and Pook se Bos, while the contracting company, Transception (through their corporate social investment), will be sponsoring the paint for Flamingo Crescent and Wag ’n Bietjie in Nomzamo.

Today we launched this campaign with residents in Phumlani Village and I would like to thank them for their commitment to work with us in rolling out this project and reducing the risks of fires.

While we are building houses according to the waiting list for those who qualify, we roll out initiatives like these and re-blocking of informal settlements in order to save lives and property.

Unfortunately, most fires are caused by negligence and the onus is on all residents to ensure that they exercise extra caution with flammable materials.

I once again want to emphasise my plea to residents to please work with us.

Residents need to look out for one another to ensure that we are all careful and that we keep out of harm’s way.

We hope to roll out this campaign on a bigger scale and see a significant reduction in the number of fires and ultimately no more loss of life due to fires.

We simply cannot allow this annual occurrence to continue and need to collectively intensify our efforts to ensure that Cape Town is a safe city.

Issued by Zara Nichlson, Spokesperson for the Executive Mayor – Praticia de Lille, City of Cape Town, 1 December 2015