The Burning Hills of Cape Town

The massive fire raging in the southern peninsula mountains is set to burn for at least another two days – perhaps longer.

With the Cape Town Cycle Tour taking place on Sunday, the battle to contain the fire raged on on Tuesday, with helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and ground teams fighting the blaze spread out over a vast area – fuelled by thick fynbos that has not been burnt since the huge fire of 2000.

The focus of the firefighting on Tuesday morning was Hout Bay and Tokai, where two helicopters waterbombed flames above the multimillion-rand Tokai plantation for hours, landing at Reddam to “hot fuel” – refuelling without switching off.

One helicopter focused on a thick stand of bluegums just south of Elephant Eye cave, while the other waterbombed the line of fire creeping north along the top of the plantations. Later they were joined by a fixed-wing aircraft that dropped three-and-a-half tons of water at a time. They were helped by the drop in the fierce south-easter overnight, but then the wind changed to a north-westerly during the day, pushing the smoke back over Constantiaberg and making further flying impossible because of poor visibility.

They were forced to leave the area and by late afternoon the fire had got into the plantation.

Late Tuesday afternoon the two Working on Fire helicopters and one from the SA Air Force were waterbombing flames that were moving down towards Clovelly and above Kalk Bay and St James, filling their 1 200-litre Bambi buckets off Fish Hoek beach.

The choppers can no longer take water from the dam in Silvermine as the water level has become so low from the firefighting and SANParks has to ensure the survival of the aquatic life in the dam.