Note to Editors: Please find attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by DA Councillor Don van Zyl
The Democratic Alliance (DA) conducted an oversight inspection at the Lekwa-Teemane Town Hall and Christiana Clinic after a fire gutted the building Tuesday evening. See photos here, here and here.
We also engaged with the Lekwa-Teemane Fire Department and found that this department is severely under-resourced with both equipment and firefighters. See photos here, here, and here.
The Lekwa-Teemane Fire Department is staffed by only three firefighters. One is on leave, and the station is based just behind the gutted Town Hall and Clinic. Unfortunately, for the Fire Department to function optimally, it requires at least 25 firefighters on a rotational shift schedule.
Currently, the three firefighters are at the station from 8am to 4pm, Monday to Saturday, and on standby, Sundays, Public Holidays and after hours.
The station does not have a two-way emergency radio system, and the firefighters depend on their personal cell phones to coordinate fire and rescue operations.
The fire at the Town Hall was first reported just after 6pm on Tuesday evening, but it took the firefighters almost 45 minutes to arrive on the scene with firefighting equipment when the blaze was already well underway. The fire station was unmanned at the time, and due to loadshedding which affected the cellphone network coverage, the response time was delayed.
Additional firefighters and equipment were dispatched from Taung and Bloemhof, and only arrived later. It took firefighters more than two hours to bring the blaze under control.
Although we do not know the cause of the fire, and investigations are underway, it is our firm believe that had the Lekwa-Teemane Fire Department been properly resourced with the necessary equipment, radio system and the requisite number of firefighters, the blaze could have been contained much sooner, and the damage limited.
This fire follows a blaze that destroyed the Christiana District Hospital’s entire medical wing in September last year. It now makes sense that considering the limited resources at the Lekwa-Teemane Fire Department, as well as the dysfunctional fire hydrants at the time, resulted in the extensive damage. See photos here, here and here.
It will cost millions to rebuild the Town Hall and Clinic –money that the Lekwa-Teemane Local Municipality does not have. This again shows that if money were spent on capacitating the local fire department, tragedies like these could be avoided.
Obviously, with the medical wing of the Christiana District Hospital and the Clinic now destroyed, it will negatively impact on the delivery of medical services to the community, and place more strain on the ailing North West Provincial Department of Health to reallocate resources to deliver medical services in the interim.
The DA will take up the matter of the lack of resources and firefighting staff in the Lekwa-Teemane Council, the Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District Council, to urgently allocate the necessary resources to the fire station in Christiana and to fill the current 13 vacancies of firefighters without delay.
In addition, we will through our Provincial Spokesperson on Health, Gavin Edwards MPL, engage the MEC for Health, Somadoda Sambatha, to ensure that primary healthcare services are delivered to the community through mobile clinics. We will also ask for a report on the status of the refurbishment of the Christiana District Hospital.