A five-storey building occupied by homeless people has been razed by a nighttime fire, killing at least 73 people in Johannesburg, South Africa.
According to a local government official in South Africa, some occupants in the building threw themselves out of windows to escape the blaze and might have died as a result of that.
Seven of the victims were children, the youngest a 1-year-old, according to an emergency services spokesperson.
Another 43 people were injured in the blaze, which broke out at about 1 a.m. in the heart of Johannesburg’s central business district.
Abandoned buildings, referred to as “hijacked buildings” in the area are commonly occupied by people desperately seeking some form of accommodation.
Johannesburg Emergency Services Management spokesman, Robert Mulaudzi, said the death toll was likely to increase and more bodies were likely trapped inside the building. The fire took three hours to contain, he said, and firefighters had only worked their way through three of the building’s five floors by mid-morning.
“Over 20 years in the service, I’ve never come across something like this,” Mulaudzi said.
The building’s interior was effectively “an informal settlement” where shacks and other structures had been thrown up and people were crammed into rooms, he said. There were “obstructions” everywhere that would have made it very difficult for residents to escape the deadly blaze and which hindered emergency crews trying to work through the site, according to Mulaudzi.
Search teams found 64 bodies, and the chance of anyone being found alive hours after the fire broke out was “very slim,” he said.
As many as 200 people may have been living in the building, witnesses said.
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