Children perish in crèche blaze

23 June 2015 - 02:01 By Katharine Child, Graeme Hosken, Poppy Louw and Shenaaz Jamal

A distraught woman wailed "why, why" as her neighbours tried to console her. Another sat silently under plastic sheeting, staring without expression at her feet. Two mothers had lost their children. The older girl was three, her companion a year younger.Nobody knows exactly what caused the fire but when residents rushed into the smoke-filled Hillbrow flat they could not see the girls; it is believed they had hidden under a bed, terrified.Seven of their classmates were shepherded to safety, as the fire spread in the second-storey flat.It was only once firemen had extinguished the blaze that the girls were carried out of the building; they had apparently died of smoke inhalation.Distraught parents rushed to the scene, an uncle of one of the girls broke down screaming, collapsing against a parked car in anguish. Curious onlookers gathered around the building that was by then in complete darkness because of load-shedding.Robert Mulaudzi, a spokesman for the City of Johannesburg emergency services, said the flat was being used as a crèche. The cause of the fire was to be investigated.The owner of the crèche had been taken to hospital after she had fainted.A Johannesburg firefighter, who could not be named as she is not authorised to speak to the media, said the problem posed by illegal crèches was at crisis level. None of them complied with safety standards."These illegal crèches are in nearly every building in the city, the majority of which should not even be inhabited."The teachers are not qualified to deal with emergencies, there are no fire extinguishers, no medical kits [and the] majority of the crèches are hopelessly overcrowded," she said.The City of Johannesburg estimates that there are about 1600 illegal crèches in the city, many situated in the CBD. It is unclear whether the crèche at which the fire occurred was registered or not.The firefighter said the situation was compounded by the fact that fire stations were battling to keep their vehicles on the road."Johannesburg City fire station had no fire engines. They had to dispatch a vehicle that is usually used to fill up firefighters' oxygen cylinders so that firefighters could get to the scene."Engines from outlying stations had to be called in to assist, so that they could try and save these children."Fires are not the only threat to these poor children. Often we get calls to assist children who have fallen out of windows, sometimes as high as three floors up because the buildings don't have burglar bars."It is a total crisis, which is compounded by the lack of working fire-fighting equipment," the firefighter said.According to Mulaudzi, fire- fighters were sent from the Fairview central fire station and the Berea fire station.Joan van Niekerk, president of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, said there was definitely legislation, regulations, norms and standards that regulated the operation of childcare facilities such as crèches.For example, facilities in which more than six children are looked after have to be registered.But illegal crèches existed because of the money charged by facilities that adhered to the regulations, Van Niekerk said. Parents who could not afford to pay more opted for illegal facilities."The most vulnerable are single mothers who earn very little. These women are stuck between a rock and a hard place, because they realise how dangerous these places are, but have no other means of affording better child care for their children."These facilities should not exist, but they do and they serve a purpose."It is a real tragedy, and it is a tragedy faced by poor mothers and families," Van Niekerk said...

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