Table Mountain National Park (TMNP) recorded 119 fires in just one year, which is 35 more than the 85 fires from the previous 12 months.
Of these 119 fires, 32 occurred in the time frame of two months, as reported by News24.
In April and May of this year alone, TMNP responded to 32 fires, which included five ‘multi-day fires’.
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The primary causes of the fires this season were cooking fires, arson and lightning strikes, which occurred towards the end of the season, according to Justin Buchmann, TMNP fire manager.
‘What exacerbated this was the extreme weather events that drove the intensity of the fires and made suppression challenging. TMNP has adapted operations to meet the risk,’ said Buchmann.
‘We have also worked with our partners, such as NCC Environmental Services, Volunteer Wildfire Services and Working on Fire, to increase team numbers in strategic locations and ensure that our ground crews match and complement the aerial suppression response,’ he added.
In addition, the terrain in the TMNP played a role in managing response to fires.
‘Fynbos is fire adaptive and requires fire periodically to regenerate and rejuvenate. Many of the areas burnt this season needed to burn for ecological reasons. The challenge we have is to ensure that areas do not burn too frequently, as this can cause species loss in extreme instances,’ said Buchmann.
‘From a safety perspective, the ever-expanding wildland-urban interface does place challenges on fire services. The same applies to mountain users. With increased park activities comes some risk from fire, especially in remote areas,’ he added.
It has also been recorded that more than 533 hours of active flying and 6 318 litres of water were used to suppress the fires, and that Western Cape firefighters had responded to more than 9 500 fires between December and May.
Anton Bredell, Western Cape Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC, said the fires had burnt more than 135 000 hectares of land.
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Picture: Jaco Marais / Gallo Images
