Inquiry Into Johannesburg Fire Blames City Officials for Deadly Conditions

Africa|Inquiry Into Johannesburg Fire Blames City Officials for Deadly Conditions

An enquiry into a deadly occurrence successful Johannesburg past August that killed 76 radical and exposed a lodging situation successful South Africa’s largest metropolis placed the blasted connected officials who ignored “ringing alarm bells” for years.

The eight-month inquiry, led by a retired law tribunal justice, released its findings successful a study connected Sunday. The study said that years of inaction by metropolis agencies had allowed the gathering to autumn into lethal disrepair, and singled retired a high-ranking authoritative for blame.

“The consequences of the occurrence would person been mitigated had the metropolis complied with its ineligible obligations arsenic proprietor and municipality,” the study said.

In the aboriginal hours of Aug. 31, a occurrence ripped done a derelict gathering successful downtown Johannesburg. Once a women’s shelter, it had been each but abandoned by metropolis agencies though it was owned by the authorities and managed by the Johannesburg Property Company, a authorities agency. Instead, astir 600 radical hopeless for affordable accommodation were squatting successful the five-story building, creating a tinderbox that would pb to 1 of the deadliest residential fires successful South Africa’s caller history.

While a nonmigratory successful the gathering aboriginal confessed to mounting the fire, the study recovered that metropolis officials knew astir the “distressing conditions” and had allowed the gathering to go a firetrap. Once known arsenic the Usindiso women’s shelter, the gathering was taken implicit by transgression organizations who collected rent.

The operation had nary municipal energy oregon moving water. Instead, residents utilized the building’s occurrence hoses and occurrence extinguishers to cod and store water, and created amerciable energy connections. They erected partitions of wood, cardboard and cloth, built shacks wrong rooms and cooked connected paraffin stoves. Heaps of trash piled up astir the building. The operation was known arsenic a haven for transgression successful the area, and yet instrumentality enforcement was virtually nonexistent, the study found.