The fire in the South African Parliament in Cape Town, which raged for two days, was under control on Tuesday (January 4th), the spokesperson for the city’s firefighters, Jermaine Carelse, told AFP. The fire had started again Monday afternoon, after a lull, and firefighters struggled in the evening with strong winds in the port city. “The fire was fueled by strong south-easterly winds but firefighters managed to bring it under control just before midnight”, Carelse said.
Tuesday morning, “just before five o’clock”, “there was a small resumption of flames but the firefighters managed to extinguish it”, he added. In the morning, four fire trucks were still at work and about twenty firefighters “to follow the evolution of the situation during the day”, he further clarified.
Sunday, the wooded room with leather armchairs where the deputies sit had been totally devastated. In this most recent part of the vast edifice, composed of three buildings built at different times, the firefighters had first had to retreat on Sunday in the face of the intensity of the fire, before taming the flames during the night, then letting appear a black, soaked carcass.
A 49-year-old man was arrested on Sunday inside Parliament for “burglary and arson”. He was to be presented to justice on Tuesday. The fire started at dawn on Sunday, in the oldest wing of the impressive building, the roof of which was completely destroyed. According to investigators, the fire broke out in two separate homes and the automatic extinguishing system did not work properly because the water was turned off.
Surveillance cameras showed that the arrested man was present at around 2 a.m. “But security didn’t see him until around 6 a.m., when they looked at the screens, alerted by the smoke.”, the Minister of Public Works, Patricia De Lille, told AFP. “The cameras worked. The problem is, no one checked them on that fateful night.”, she explained to the press. “This is also part of the investigation. How was it not known earlier that there was someone in the building? There was certainly a breach in security.”, she noted.