Building, shacks burn in blazes across city

Firefighters spent hours battling a blaze that broke out in a Bree Street building in the city.

Fire department spokesman Theo Layne said the ground and first floors of the Imbuyambo Cultural Centre, near the corner of Bree and Prestwich streets, caught fire at about 12.40pm yesterday.

No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

“There was nobody inside when firefighters arrived on the scene,” Layne said.

The fire attracted the attention of hundreds of spectators throughout the afternoon, who stood watching the firefighters, and taking pictures and videos with their cellphones.

Big black clouds of smoke billowed from the building as a fireman on a crane blasted water over the top of the smouldering building.

Some roads in the area were closed.

By late yesterday afternoon, firefighters were still at the scene, but Layne said the fire was under control.

Two people died and another two were injured in shack fires across the city at the weekend.

On Friday night a Gugulethu man died from his burn wounds after a shack in Native Yard 6 caught fire about 8pm.

In an earlier fire in Site C, Khayelitsha, a man and woman sustained burn wounds when their shack caught fire.

In Zonnebloem, a man died after a backyard shack burnt to the ground just before midnight on Friday.

Four people were displaced but unharmed when a fire in Monwabisi Park destroyed three shacks in the early hours of yesterday morning, disaster management spokesman Wilfred Solomons-Johannes said.

- IOL