A house fire that engulfed a five-story building, has killed more than 70 people, including children, in central Johannesburg on Thursday.
The South African emergency services disclosed this on Thursday, noting that another 52 were injured in what is on track to become one of the deadliest fires worldwide in recent years.
An official said bodies were discovered piled up at a closed security gate, preventing people from escaping the blaze.
City authorities said affected buildings in a deprived, crime-ridden area had been turned into illegal housing after being abandoned.
Accordingly, it stated that most of those living there were foreigners, one resident said.
Meanwhile, Hundreds of people lived there, and on Thursday morning, at least 74 died there, including at least 12 children, in one of the worst residential fires in South Africa’s history. Flames devoured a structure that overcrowding, security gates, mounds of garbage and flimsy subdividing had turned into a death trap. Some victims leaped from upper windows of the five-story building rather than burn to death.
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The disaster came as no surprise to residents, housing advocates or officials of a city that has more than 600 derelict, illegally occupied structures — all but about 30 of them privately owned — according to Mgcini Tshwaku, a city councilman who oversees public safety.
The buildings are home to untold thousands of South Africans suffering from a shortage of housing and jobs, and to migrants from other countries who come searching for opportunity, only to find a nation enduring its own economic crisis. And these urban squatter camps are routinely “hijacked,” residents say, by organized groups demanding payment.
Distraught people milled through the crowd gathered around the building in the downtown area, and went from hospital to hospital, searching for loved ones or anyone who might have scraps of information. Officials said at least 61 survivors were treated at several hospitals.
