Battling the Blazes: Record-Setting Summer Fire Season
The Summer fire season, which officially started on 01 December 2023, started off with a few small fires between December and the first three weeks of January.
On 23 January 2024, there was an ignition at Kluitjieskraal in the Wolseley area. Over the next three weeks, there were multiple ignitions throughout the Western Cape with the concentration of conflagrations being the Boland and Whale Coast.
On 31 January 2024, a record eight fires were burning on CapeNature land throughout the Western Cape. The first day where no fires were reported was on 7 February 2024 marking the end of a grueling 15 days of firefighting by CapeNature staff.
In total, 52 501ha burnt of which 15 587ha were on the CapeNature estate. 240 CapeNature firefighters and 220 Working on Fire personnel attended to the fires.
Once again, our partners such as Working on Fire, Provincial Disaster Management, local and district municipalities, Fire Protection Associations and Volunteer Wildfire Services supported our efforts with passion, urgency and enthusiasm and we are grateful for their ongoing support.
The Summer fire season has not concluded as yet, and we wish all strength to our fire fighters and incident management teams on the ground.
Make sure you are fire safe this fire season.
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