The CEO of the Johannesburg Property Company, Hellen Botes has told the Commission of Inquiry into the Usindiso building fire in Johannesburg, that they did approach the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (JOSHCO) to purchase the building from them in 2018.
Botes says that lack of funding meant they were not able to make the purchase.
Botes has been testifying at the commission into the death of 77 people in the August 2023 blaze.
Botes told the commission that after JOSCHO failed to purchase the building, they were left with tenants still living in the building, which they couldn’t evict as they didn’t have alternate accommodation to house them.
“So, from JOSHCO perspective they could not acquire the building as they did not have sufficient funding and other priorities in the inner city as JOSCHO is responsible for providing social housing. So, the JOSCHO initiative falls away. So those attempts we don’t yield any results. Then what we left with is the building with occupants in and we cannot evict them because we would have to provide them with temporary accommodation.”
On Wednesday, first responders to the Usindiso Building fire rejected the testimony of witnesses who alleged the fire engines had little to no water.
Emergency Services officials made a second appearance before the commission.
Johannesburg emergency services official, Rapule Thipa said no fire engines left the scene to refill.
“That is the fire engine that is coming from the fire station. It has the same pumping capacity, the same capacity of water as our fire engine, 3000l of water. This is water that we carry daily to respond to initial fire attack (sic),” says Thipa.
Thipa told the commission that there was interference from the community when firefighters arrived on the scene.
In an attempt to assist firefighters, survivors grabbed the fire hose from the truck and directed it towards the fire.
