The Commission of Inquiry into the Usindiso building fire that claimed 77 lives has heard how the City of Johannesburg had insufficient resources to respond to the deadly blaze.
The public hearings resumed in Johannesburg today with the testimony of a Chief Fire Officer of a privately owned fire brigade, Wynand Engelbrecht.
His company worked alongside other emergency services on 31 August last year after a fire broke out at the illegally occupied building in Marshalltown, Johannesburg.
Engelbrecht testified that in terms of the Fire Brigade Regulations, every city is required to have 70 to 120 fire engines. He says the City of Johannesburg had three to five fire engines, barely enough to respond to the raging fire.
“The city should have somewhere between 112 and 120 operational vehicles in its fleet of which about 70 of them at any given time, over the past five years and longer than that was not the case.”
Full Story Source: ‘City had insufficient resources to respond to Marshalltown fire’
