The City of Johannesburg is investigating the cause of the inferno which left one resident dead, and several others injured at the Broadwalk Urban Village in Midrand.
The apartment complex was gutted by the massive fire on Heritage Day.
IOL reported on Wednesday that spokesperson for the City of Joburg’s emergency management services (EMS) Xolile Khumalo said the lifeless body of a woman was retrieved from the building, after it was found covered under rubble inside the doomed residential complex which used to be an office park.
“The EMS search and rescue team has recovered a body of a female in Broadwalk Urban Village. The body was submerged under rubble and the roof that had collapsed during the fire incidents,” said Khumalo.
“The complex’s security has shared information that this is where the fire initially begun yesterday (Tuesday) night. EMS would like to pass heartfelt condolences to the family.”
Officials from government spent Thursday touring the gutted building, seeking to find clues of what caused the residential complex which has around 130 units.
In an update, City of Joburg’s member of the mayoral committee for housing, Mlungisi Mabaso told broadcaster Newzroom Afrika that the building was shoddy.
“Yes, it is a privately owned building but we do have a responsibility as government to ensure that all the private developments are compliant and that our residents are looked after and are protected. We have decided as the city that we would be instituting our own investigation on how the approvals for the conversion of that building from an office to a residential property,” said Mabaso.
“When we arrived there for a site inspection we then learnt that the partitioning of that building was not compliant because there were no fire walls which were constructed to prevent the spread of the fire within the building itself,” he said.
“How the partitioning was done is actually questionable and we want to understand how they got approval or whether they even made an application to the city for the conversion of that building from an office block to a residential building.”
Mabaso said in terms of fire extinguishers, the building was compliant with by-laws.
He said the questionable partitioning of the building had caused the fire to spread rapidly, leaving the more than 100 families homeless.
As the City of Joburg tries to engage the property owners, Mabaso said the business people are nowhere to be found.
“We have tried to reach out to the property owners with no success and it is unfortunate because in the city we have always welcomed private development and we sometimes support these developments because they seek to assist us in dealing with the housing backlog. They also boost our economy in the city and they assist us in job creation,” he said.
“But in situations where they are unable to reach out to us, even when we reach out to them so that we are able to find an amicable way forward in this incident that has occurred, it is very much unfortunate,” said Mabaso.
“We have been trying to locate the owner and the owner is not returning our calls. We have tried everything to reach out to the owners of that particular property but they are nowhere to be found.”
He said City of Joburg has been engaging with the residential complex’s managing agent hired by the building owners.
“The owner is nowhere to be found. The phone is ringing but they are not responding to us. We have been calling out to them to reach out to us so that we are able to engage for us to find a way forward,” said the MMC.
Mabaso said the building owners have however reached out to residents who survived the inferno, alerting them that they want to return the tenants deposits.
City of Joburg insists that is not sufficient intervention from the landlords as the tenants have lost almost all their belongings in the doomed building.
IOL