A possible catastrophe was averted on Saturday at a gas plant in the industrial area of Makhado (Louis Trichardt) when fire fighters and bystanders barely managed to put out a runaway fire just in time.

The blaze started at about around 19:00 on the premises of an adjacent scrapyard, RET Scrap Metal, in Industria Street. In Unika Street, employees of the Hapinas timber industry spotted the fire and alerted their employer. They immediately started to douse the fire to prevent it from spreading to their own premises, as well as the Total Gas depot.

DA Councillor Zaheera Jooma was contacted, who in turn phoned the local fire station. 

“After half an hour, no one had been sent out. I was told that the fire truck had been sent to an accident in Madombidzha. I drove to the fire station, and 500m away from the station the large fire truck had broken down,” Cllr Jooma said. It appeared that the other large fire truck was in for repairs and that the smaller fire trucks had no water. 

A working fire truck eventually arrived and the fire was finally brought under control. By that time, the fire had already reached Total Gaz’s fence. Fortunately, fire breaks were in place.

On Tuesday, Ms Sana Nakubasena, an order clerk at Total Gaz, said that she was not aware of a fire, since the security officer who had worked during the weekend was off duty. The owner of RET Scrap Metal, Mr Derick Opperman, also said that he was not aware of the fire. Mr Ferdie Venter, also from RET, however, said that he had been at the premises on Sunday.

“By then it was not burning. I have no idea how the fire started,” Venter said. 

“The fire at the scrapyard could have been a huge catastrophe, taking into account the nature of the surrounding industries. To me it seemed to have started like a veldfire. There was no fire break on the scrap metal side. Fortunately, Total Gaz had fire breaks. It is imperative that we have all our fire trucks in working order. We will take this matter up with the provincial legislature,” Cllr Zooma said.

Two other fires occurred in the same area over the weekend.

The Makhado fire chief, Mr Jack Ramalatso, said on Tuesday that they had requested and received a major pumper from another station and thus had an 8000-litre fire truck available. Their one major fire truck is in Johannesburg for repairs, which will take another two months and the other one will have a new clutch installed this week. They are dependent on municipal water.