The Cape Winelands District Municipality’s Fire Services together with various partners continue to battle the fire in the mountains and veld above Stellenbosch.
Sunday marks a week since the fire started in the Overberg area.
The incident command team have reported that the night was quiet with good progress made in certain areas, despite a major flare-up that occurred just before sundown in the Jonkershoek valley just above Lanzerac.
The rapid deployment of resources allowed for swift containment.
The fire on the peaks of Bothmaskop through to Jonkershoek are currently burning in very high, mostly inaccessible terrain. Due to the inherent risks that the combination of inaccessibility, low visibility and dense cloud cover present, no immediate action is planned for these fire lines.
The fire lines will either burn out naturally as they run out of fuel or will continue to burn toward more accessible areas. Once they are more accessible, firefighting resources will be deployed.
The fire fighting and ground teams assisted by purpose-built vehicles will be deployed to hotspots in the accessible Jonkershoek areas, where they will continue with the management of flare-ups, monitoring and mopping up operations. These operations will continue throughout the night and into tomorrow.
According to current estimations a total area of 13 600ha has been affected, this includes the areas on the Overberg side. The teams are being replaced by fresh crews this morning.
Sunday’s predicted hot weather will prove challenging for fire fighters and ground teams, as it is conducive to flare-ups and heat exhaustion. The wind is predicted to increase speed in the late afternoon and the effect of this will be closely monitored.