LETTER | Parallels between devastating fires of 1869 and those last week

Conditions were perfect for veld fires.

Excellent rains had broken a long drought a year or so ago. But the summer had been unusually hot.

Vegetation growth from the rains was lush, but everything was incredibly dry.

Nobody knows how the fires started. Some say it was farmers burning brushwood; others say it was intentional.

A gentle hot north-easterly wind turned into a westerly gale and fires raged along a 450km stretch of the Southern Cape coastal belt — Riversdale, Mossel Bay, George, Humansdorp and Van Stadens — all devastated.

That wasn’t last week, it was more than 150 years ago.

The losses from the Great Fire of 1869 were devastating.

Then, like now, acts of kindness broke out everywhere. In 1869, we had a Port Elizabeth Fire Relief Committee.

Last week, WhatsApp groups donated money, food, eyedrops and firefighting equipment, and businesses established drop-off points for the delivery of aid.

We live in a fire-prone region.

When Vasco De Gama first sighted the Southern Cape coastline in 1497, he named it Terra de Fume (Land of Smoke) after the fires burning along the coastline.

Fire was central to the livelihoods of the Khoisan from the earliest of times.

They regularly burned the veld to regenerate nutritious grasses, control pests and harvest uintjies.

And a wealth of archaeological research demonstrates how our earliest inhabitants adapted to a landscape prone to drought, wind and fire.

Our democracy is not adapting as it should to the challenges of our fire-prone environments.

We live with the legacy of colonisation, an era when the indigenous forests of the Southern Cape were ruthlessly harvested.

Intact indigenous Southern Cape forest rarely burns.

Fires may encroach on the edges, but when the forests are large, diverse and moist, fire resistance increases.

The 1869 fire raged through the heavily exploited forest areas but the intact forests, in the inaccessible kloofs, survived.

The 1869 fire was a catalyst for afforestation and alien species were planted in commercial forestry plantations.

Compared to indigenous trees, the imported alien species such as pine, gum and wattle grew quickly and helped to dry out roads and marshy areas.

But such plantations destroy wetlands, are fire-prone and invade natural vegetation.

Commercial forests reduce the exploitation of indigenous forest, but they need fire and natural systems management.

In the 1940s, airmen from the air force base at St Albans fought fires at Woodridge Preparatory School.

In 1958, divisional council firemen stopped a fire that threatened the school.

Prior to 1994, Safcol, the state-owned forestry company, did a reasonable job, but the inefficiencies of government had crept in.

The fires of November 2005 rudely exposed Safcol management inefficiencies, devastating 10,000ha of Longmore (a commercial plantation near Woodridge) and destroying the commercial wildflower industry in the area.

Since privatisation in 2005 it’s taken 20 years for Longmore to recover.

Management has improved, but the wildflower industry is gone — probably forever — due to the risk of fire and the losses incurred in 2005.

The challenge for our fire-prone region is the management of the fynbos biome.

Last week’s fires were fuelled by alien vegetation that was originally imported to support commercial forestry.

In the kloofs, the indigenous forest habitat is choked with aliens, fire resistant thicket vegetation has made way for agriculture, and fynbos areas are smothered with alien wattles.

It’s a catastrophic disaster waiting for the right conditions, and we dodged another great fire last week, mostly due to the outpouring of community action.

But throughout, there was the knowledge that we’re underprepared and success hung by a thread.

Alien vegetation and the absence of managed fire regimes for fynbos have created a tinderbox.

The initial fires at Greenbushes and Humansdorp demanded targeted aerial support within hours, not days.

It took three days to bring in aerial support from the Working for Fire bases in Mossel Bay and Stutterheim.

Bambi buckets — a helicopter-borne water bag for aerial firefighting — should be permanently deployable by the private sector from bases within our city, with government support schemes in place.

The government Working for Fire programme and its longstanding cosy R4.2bn tender award to a single private company, that shortchanges our region, was challenged in the Gauteng high court in 2022 and set aside in 2025.

Such disputes undoubtedly impact on efficiencies and it’s imperative that the city asserts its right to ensure that sufficient Bambi buckets and other equipment are deployable through the private sector at short notice within the city.

As in 1869, we’re indebted to the countless private companies, volunteers and committed government employees who stopped the fires that were threatening tragedy.

It now rests on the politicians to ensure that appropriate technology and fire prevention mechanisms are implemented in the city, and that private sector opportunities are made available to more than just one company.

It’s not about whether we will have more fires, it’s about how prepared we are for the next big one. On current form, we’re not prepared at all.