The fire that claimed the lives of three firefighters at a government building in the Johannesburg CBD has finally been extinguished after about 36 hours.
The cause of the fire, which broke out on the 23rd floor of the Bank of Lisbon building on Wednesday morning, has still to be established.
As firefighters became exhausted, City of Joburg fire services had to call in the help of colleagues from elsewhere.
The #JoburgFire at the @GautengHealth building has been extinguished.
Thank you to all the firefighters, Tshwane, Ekhululeni, West Rand, Sedibeng, OR Tambo Int, SAPS, SANDF and residents for supporting us during this tragedy.#JoburgsBRAVEST
Together towards a #SaferJoburg pic.twitter.com/qyYn0f7xai— Michael Sun (@MichaelSun168) 6 September 2018
The city’s Community Safety MMC, Michael Sun, has thanked all who came out to assist.
“It certainly has been a very devastating two days for us. The good news is that we have finally managed to extinguish the fire here in the Joburg CBD. We are relieved to see that the fire has been put out. We just want to say a big thank you to all the residents and the city of Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Sedibeng, OR Tambo Airport, SANDF, SAPS and all who assisted and supported us in this tragedy.”
Meanwhile, nurses union Denosa has disputed Gauteng Infrastructure Development MEC Jacob Mamabolo’s statements that plans were in progress to move health employees from the building.
The union says that they had been asking the department to move workers since 2012.
Mamabolo earlier briefed the media that they were in the final process of relocating employees.
The union says that officials and politicians must be held accountable for the loss of life.
On Wednesday, Mamabolo promised to take full responsibility for the disaster should investigations find he was at fault. The building, which housed three Gauteng government departments, including Mamabolo’s, was found to be non-safety compliant before the blaze.
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