The death toll from a raging fire in a five-story building in central Johannesburg has risen to 52, according to the city’s emergency servic...
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The death toll from a raging fire in a five-story building in central Johannesburg has risen to 52, according to the city’s emergency services.
The number of people injured stands at 43, said spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi. Emergency services and firefighters are working to put out the blaze, public broadcaster SABC reported.Videos from the scene show huge orange flames engulfing the lower floor of a building, and scores of people who appear to have fled outside.
In a series of tweets shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, emergency services spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said multiple people were being treated and some had been transported to health care facilities.
The cause of the fire is not yet known, according to SABC. Johannesburg’s emergency services said the fire was reported at around 1:30 a.m. local time Thursday.
“At this stage the cause of the fire incident is still a subject of investigations,” the statement read. “Officials from City of Johannesburg Disaster Management have been activated to start facilitating relief for affected families,” it added.
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| Johannesburg: 52 Dead in South Africa Building Inferno |
The building has been evacuated, and spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said a search and recovery operation was under way. It was likely the death toll would rise, he said, and it was not immediately clear what caused the blaze.
Inside the five-storey building was “an informal settlement”, Mulaudzi said. “So there [are] a lot of informal structures inside the building. There is a lot of debris which we have to remove.”
Authorities said the fire had been largely extinguished, but smoke still seeped out of the blackened building in downtown Johannesburg.
Television footage showed fire trucks and ambulances outside the red and white building with burned-out windows, which had been cordoned off by police.
The building was the fourth “older building” to catch alight in the city in recent months, local news organisation Times Live reported.
Earlier in August, the top floor of a building in the suburb of Yeoville, near the central business district, caught alight, while in June, two children were killed in a fire in Hilbrow and in July, a fire broke out after an underground gas explosion. - Online Sources
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