By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The University of Cape Town’s insurance company is looking to sue SANParks for damages over its alleged failure to deploy choppers quickly enough in last year’s April fire.
The fire broke out on the slopes of Table Mountain – before spreading to UCT’s campus.
The blaze destroyed a restaurant at Rhodes Memorial and several historical buildings.
Under the National Veld and Forest Fire Act, a property owner must act with urgency to extinguish a fire that begins on their land or face liability from property owners to whom the fire has spread.
The two parties’ insurers are now set to fight it out in court, with the delay in deploying the choppers a key issue on the one hand, and evidence of whether UCT had taken the appropriate precautions under the Act to prevent fire, on the other.
The fire destroyed most of the African Studies published print collection, including the entire African Studies film collection on DVD, all the UCT calendars, some of the heavily used government publications documents from South Africa and across the continent, and manuscripts and archives kept in the reading room for processing or digitisation or awaiting transfer after being digitised.
South African National Parks (SANParks) had announced that natural causes have been ruled out as a possible cause for the Table Mountain National Park fire that damaged UCT buildings.
The fire burned about 600 hectares of land within the Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), buildings on the UCT’s upper campus and some neighbouring properties on April 18, 2021.
The report ruled out natural causes such as rock falls or lightning strikes or an accidental/negligent incident such as an abandoned camping/cooking fire as possible causes of the fire.
The report states that according to CCTV footage and eyewitnesses, the fire started at approximately 8.40am under extreme weather conditions, such as very warm temperatures (26°C) and low relative humidity (19%).
Within a few hours the temperature had increased to 34°C and the relative humidity had decreased to 13%, with a prevailing north-westerly breeze of approximately 12km/h.
These conditions, in addition to dry vegetation, presented an ideal environment for the rapid spread of the fire due to the high fire danger index.
The independent fire report is also available from the SANParks website at the following link: https://www.sanparks.org/about/news/?id=58294.
Fullview reached out to SANParks and the Environmental Affairs Department for comment, but both declined due to the pending litigation.