As we all are in owe of the devastating fires raging in Cape Town, we have to take note of a few things.
1. The last Major Fire was in 2000 and 2001
2. Fynbos needs to burn between 5 to 10 years
3. In the pass we did controlled burns
So let’s think what has changed, the mountains above cape town was controlled by the regional movement. The land, like most of wilderness was transferred to either Sans Parks or Cape nature. The regional Government had teams that be controlled burns and the same teams new and could fight fires with back burns. I am yet to see any back burns in the current fire situations; I only see teams moving trying to contain fires which in my opinion are harder to do.
I take my hat off to those guys and gals for such hard work, i saw it in 2000 and again today.
We need to change our approach from reactive to proactive, there is a cycle of hot summers and we need to work all the time in order to avoid these situations.
In conclusion I feel we need to go back to the old guys from 30 years ago and find out how they did it. Remember there was more land on the mountain, less houses and yet there was less raging fires
G
Rand - Dollar
18.80
+1.1%
Rand - Pound
23.49
+1.3%
Rand - Euro
20.10
+1.5%
Rand - Aus dollar
12.28
+1.0%
Rand - Yen
0.12
+2.8%
Platinum
923.40
-0.2%
Palladium
957.50
-3.3%
Gold
2,336.75
+0.2%
Silver
27.20
-0.9%
Brent Crude
89.01
+1.1%
Top 40
69,358
+1.3%
All Share
75,371
+1.4%
Resource 10
62,363
+0.4%
Industrial 25
103,903
+1.3%
Financial 15
16,161
+2.2%
All JSE data delayed by at least 15 minutes