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A deadly fire in Johannesburg’s inner city was “a wake-up call” for South Africa, says President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n
Seventy-four people were killed – including 12 children – after a blaze in a five-storey building, which was being occupied by homeless people.<\/p>\n
More than 50 others were injured.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the city of Johannesburg confirmed it owned the building, but said cartels had taken it over. Officials say the cause of the deadly fire is unclear.<\/p>\n
In a news conference at the site of the fire, Mr Ramaphosa said the incident needed to be investigated and lessons learnt to prevent future tragedies.<\/p>\n
“It’s a wake-up call for us to begin to address the situation of housing in the inner city,” the South African leader said.<\/p>\n
The building used to be a home for abused women and children, but once the lease expired, it was “hijacked”, President Ramaphosa explained to reporters.<\/p>\n
Many properties around the area where the blaze happened have been deemed unfit to live in.<\/p>\n
Yet these old blocks, abandoned by their owners or the city authorities, are full of families, often paying rent to criminal gangs who run them.<\/p>\n
Some of those who use the buildings include undocumented migrants, mostly from other African countries.<\/p>\n
The buildings, which lack running water, toilets or a legal electricity connection, are then said to have been “hijacked”.<\/p>\n
South Africa faces a chronic housing shortage, with an estimated 15,000 people estimated to be homeless in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
“We need to get on top of this and find effective ways of dealing with problems of accommodation, of housing, and services in the inner city,” Mr Ramaphosa added.<\/p>\n
He also commended emergency services, who arrived at the scene 10 minutes after the fire was reported.<\/p>\n
Johannesburg city manager Floyd Brink said 200 families were affected by the fire and “all efforts” were taken to provide accommodation.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the emergency services, Robert Mulaudzi, told the BBC that the fire had gutted the building but firefighters had been able to bring out some of the occupants.<\/p>\n
He explained that because the building was not properly looked after, makeshift structures and debris had made it hard to search for and rescue people.<\/p>\n
A video posted by Mr Mulaudzi to the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, showed fire trucks and ambulances outside the building with burnt-out windows.<\/p>\n
Photos from the scene showed covered bodies lined up near the burned building.<\/p>\n
One woman told journalists she was outside the building searching for her 24-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
“As soon as I heard the building was burning down, I knew I had to run here to come and look for her,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Now that I’m here, I’m kept in suspense because I really don’t know what is happening. I don’t get any direction – so I’m actually very anxious, I don’t know if my daughter is alive.”<\/p>\n
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A deadly fire in Johannesburg’s inner city was “a wake-up call” for South Africa, says President Cyril Ramaphosa. Seventy-four people were killed – including 12 children – after a blaze in a five-storey building, which was being occupied by homeless people. More than 50 others were injured. Earlier, the city of Johannesburg confirmed it owned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184782"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184790,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184782\/revisions\/184790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}