With fire season continuing in full swing, the Cape Winelands District Municipality announced that several fire crews have responded to two fires in the Witzenberg area.
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CWDM’s Fire Rescue and contracted ground teams NCC Wildfires together with the Winelands Fire Protection Association are attending to a fire in the Witzenberg Valley as well as above the ziplines outside Ceres.
‘At this stage, ground teams and fire crews are engaged in active fire fighting, which is causing substantial smoke,’ CDWM reported.
The respective teams will remain on scene throughout the night in an effort to contain both fires.
CWDM added that there is currently no threat to infrastructure or property at this stage.
The Witzenberg fires comes after the festive cheer in Cape Town took a backseat to a week of intense fire incidents between 18 and 26 December.
The City’s Fire and Rescue Service raced to address over a thousand incidents, primarily battling vegetation fires that contributed to 65% of the calls during this time.
The persistent south-easterly winds added to the complexity, amplifying warnings for damaging winds issued by the South African Weather Service.
On 26 December, Witzenberg Municipality announced that the entire Witzenberg region spent approximately four hours without electricity due to fires in the area.
Since then, firefighters finished off the year and swung into 2024 attending to spates of flare-ups, wildfires and other fire-related incidents across the Cape.
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Picture: NCC Wildfires / Facebook