The National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) interacted with the Eastern Cape Provincial Disaster Management Centre (PDMC) in order to obtain a response to this Parliamentary Question. The reply from the Eastern Cape PDMC is as outlined below:
a) No. The KSD Municipality does not have functional firefighting vehicles and other relevant equipment. The under mentioned vehicles, outlined in Table 1, are part of the existing firefighting fleet, but are not functional due to mechanical breakdowns:
Type of vehicle |
Purpose of vehicle |
2 x Medium Fire Pumpers |
Structural / building fires |
1 x Light Rescue |
Motor Vehicle Accidents |
2 x Light Delivery Vehicle (LDV) firefighting skid units- |
Veldfires |
b) The KSDLM’s Fire Service could not respond due to the following reasons:
(i) Both the Medium firefighting Pumpers as per above table were not operational due to mechanical breakdowns; and,
(ii) Only one (1) of the two (2) LDV firefighting Skid units was operational but had experienced a problem with the pump on the day of the reported fire incident. It must, however, be noted that this vehicle is not suitable for the use of Structural / Building Fires but only for veldfires.