Johannesburg, South Africa—— At least 73 people were killed when a dilapidated five-story building in Johannesburg, occupied by homeless people and squatters, caught fire overnight in South Africa’s largest city, emergency services said.
Some people who lived in the building’s maze of shanties and other makeshift structures may have died by jumping out of windows to escape the fire, local government officials said. Seven of the victims were children, with the youngest just one year old, according to an emergency services spokesman.
Witnesses said as many as 200 people may have lived in the building.
Emergency responders expected to find more victims as they made their way through the building, but the process was slowed by conditions inside. Dozens of bodies were lined on a nearby path, some in body bags and others covered in silver sheets and blankets.
A fire broke out in the center of Johannesburg’s central business district around 1 a.m. and 52 others were injured, said Robert Mulaudzi, spokesman for Johannesburg’s emergency services management.
Abandoned and dilapidated buildings are common in the area and are often occupied by people desperately looking for some form of accommodation. The city government referred to them as “hijacked buildings”.
Murazzi said the death toll could rise and more bodies could be trapped inside the building. He said it took three hours to bring the fire under control, and by about 10 a.m., firefighters had only extinguished three of the building’s five floors.
“This is a tragedy for Johannesburg. In more than 20 years of service, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Muloz said.
The interior of the building was actually “an informal settlement”, with sheds and other structures erected and people crammed into rooms, he said. Murazzi said there were “obstacles” everywhere, making it difficult for residents to escape the deadly blaze and preventing emergency crews from working on the scene.
Search and rescue teams found 73 bodies. He said the chances of anyone being found alive in the hours after the fire was “very slim”.
City officials said 141 families were affected by the tragedy, but they could not immediately say how many people were in the building when the fire broke out. Many of them are believed to be foreigners, officials said.
An eyewitness, who did not want to be named, told TV news channel eNCA that he lived in a building next door and heard people screaming for help and shouting “we are dying here” when the fire broke out.
Mgcini Tshwaku, a local government official, said there were signs that people were lighting fires in buildings to keep warm in winter. Officials are investigating the cause of the fire.
Smoke was still seeping from the windows of the blackened building at dawn after the fire was extinguished. Strings of sheets and other material hung from some of the broken windows. It’s unclear if people used the items to try to escape the fire, or if they were trying to save their own property.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
