JOHANNESBURG – Cape Town firefighters were battling a fire Monday that engulfed the slopes of the famous Mountain Table and destroyed parts of the University of Cape Town’s archive library.
Helicopters threw water into the area to try to contain the fire, which started on Sunday and was most likely caused by an abandoned fire, according to South African national park officials. But as the wind picked up overnight and ignited the flames, the fire spread to the mountain-bottom neighborhoods and forced the evacuation of some homes Monday morning.
Anton Bredell, Minister for the Environment and Development Planning for the Western Cape, said in a statement: “Wind speed is expected to increase during the day, which could have an impact on the extinction of the air.”
“Helicopters cannot fly if the wind is too strong and visibility is too poor, but the situation will be fully assessed,” he added. “It’s going to be a very hard day.”
On Sunday evening, police arrested a 30-year-old man in connection with new fires that broke out on Table Mountain, while the fire broke out. according to Jean-Pierre Smith, a Cape Town councilor who is part of the mayor’s safety and security committee.
The fire started around 9 a.m. Sunday on the lower slopes of Devil’s Peak, one of the rugged ridges that are part of Cape Town’s iconic Mountain Mountain backdrop. Ventilated by gusts of wind, the fire swallowed and destroyed a restaurant on the hill before moving to the university campus, which is largely built on the slopes of the mountain.
Several buildings, including a historic mill and the school library, which house important archives and book collections, were soon on fire, and waves of thick white smoke rolled through the city. No deaths have been reported so far, but five firefighters have been injured, officials said.
About 4,000 students were evacuated from campus residences on Sunday, according to Nombuso Shabalala, a university spokeswoman. The university announced on Sunday that it will suspend its operations until at least Tuesday.
Videos on social media showed dozens of students, some gathering small bags, which were rushing from the residence buildings, while the fire covered the nearby hill. Busisiwe Mtsweni, a student studying finance and accounting, was on the university’s upper campus around noon when “everyone panicked,” she said in a phone call.
Mountain sparks triggered smaller fires among buildings, and smoke waves made breathing difficult, she said. When Mrs. Mtsweni and her friends took a break at their residence to pick up their belongings, they came across a student suffering from what appeared to be an asthma attack and drove her, coughing, away from the smoky side. of the campus, she added. . Ms. Mtsweni was later evacuated by bus and spent the night in a hotel.
By Sunday evening, a reading room with special collections in the university library had been set on fire. according to university officials. The reading room housed parts of the university’s African Studies collection – which includes works on Africa and South Africa printed before 1925, hard-to-find volumes in European and African languages and other rare books – as well as an archive of precious films, according to to Niklas Zimmer, library manager at the university.
“Some of our valuable collections have been lost, however, a full assessment can only be made after the building has been declared safe,” said Ujala Satgoor, executive director of libraries at the University of Cape Town. in a statement.
While the university has recently begun a huge effort to digitize the school’s collections, only a “thin proportion of wafers” from the special collections archive has been transferred due to the enormous volume of material and the glacial pace of the work, said Mr. Zimmer, who led that program. A single microfilm cabinet, Mr Zimmer explained, could take “a lifetime” to be processed.
University officials said they hoped most of the archive – which is housed in two basements under the library and protected by a fire door system – could have been exempted. But on Monday, while scientists and librarians waited to hear the extent of the damage, many raised the possibility that the basement had been flooded during the firefighting effort.
“Very unique things have probably disappeared,” said Sibusiso Nkomo, a doctor of history. student who is a member of an interdisciplinary archival research unit on campus.
“We have lost a valuable history that tells us where we came from,” he added, noting that the mood of his colleagues was “traumatized and devastated.”
The fire is the latest in a series of devastating flames that have swept across the western province of South Africa in recent years. In 2015, fires broke out on the outskirts of Cape Town for four days, destroying about 15,000 acres of land. Two years later, another fire broke into a coastal town in the province, Knysna, killing at least four people and forcing about 10,000 to evacuate their homes.
The massive fires were fueled by a combustible mixture of fire-prone vegetation from South Africa – known as fynbos – and especially flammable tree species such as gumtrees and pines, which settlers imported to the West. Cape and which contributes to the accidental spread of fire.
To prevent uncontrollable fires, many environmentalists have warned that national park officials must conduct more frequent prescribed fynbos burns or intentionally light fires in areas where excess vegetation should be cleared. But in Cape Town, where the city’s edges have stretched to the foot of the mountain, prescribed burns are particularly difficult, and park officials have resisted resistance from residents who fear their homes could be accidentally destroyed.
“If it doesn’t burn, all the vegetation stays there and it’s only a matter of time,” said Dr. Alanna Rebelo, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape. “I had this big fire waiting to happen.”