Inferno guts down city flat

News
A BULAWAYO family escaped death by a whisker after a fire broke out at their residential flat yesterday morning.

A BULAWAYO family escaped death by a whisker after a fire broke out at their residential flat yesterday morning.

JUNIOR MOYO/NQOBILE BHEBHE

Kensington Flats, situated along 3rd Avenue and George Silundika Street caught fire destroying all the property.

According to the tenant Victor Mutuyana, the fire started from an adjacent flat due to a suspected electrical fault and spread to his apartment.

“The adjacent flat is empty and new tenants were meant to move in today (yesterday). However, while I was washing my car downstairs there was a bolt of fire upstairs and the illumination quickly spread to my flat,” Mutuyana said.

“My two kids, one in Grade 4 and the other in Grade 0, were bathing and had to flee the blaze naked. Everything is gone, clothes, blankets, furniture and documents,” Mutuyana said, adding that the value runs into several thousands of dollars.

Mutuyana said the fire brigade arrived after about 25 minutes and the crew refused to listen to him as he tried to direct them to the source of the fire.

In an interview at the scene of the fire, eyewitnesses said they heard a burst and smoke started coming out which made them alarm the fire brigade.

“We saw smoke spewing out of the flat and when we arrived here we were told by the residents that the fire had been caused by the bursting of electric wires up the ceiling,” eyewitness Sithabile Sibanda said.

“It’s sad that most of the property must be damaged while the fire could have been avoided,” she added.

Another witness Nobuhle Ngwenya said the fire brigade was at fault also for failing to take urgent action when attending the fire.

“The fire brigade from Northend came on time, but failed to attend to the fire as they had no ladders to go up while the fire intensified. They had to wait for the fire brigade from Famona which arrived when the flat was in full blaze,” Ngwenya said.

Liberty Mguni said he was shocked by the fire brigade’s failure to put out a small fire as they had read in the papers recently that they were undergoing training for such accidents.

“I’m surprised that the fire brigade took so long to put out the fire as I have recently seen them in the papers training to deal with such emergencies,” Mguni said.

Onlookers said the first crew arrived with no ladder and had to wait for back-up which arrived 10 minutes later.

This was the second fire incident in the same vicinity in a week after a garage AS Petroleum Cecil Motors was gutted by fire last week.

An ambulance and kombi carrying two containers with 2 000 litres of petrol were burnt when the kombi crew was illegally transferring fuel from the containers into an underground tank.

Bulawayo chief fire officer Richard Peterson was not available for comment.