31- August-2023- News Agencies
Illegal landlords rented out rooms in ‘hijacked building’
According to reports in local media, Usindiso, the building that caught fire, is owned by the city of Johannesburg and was leased to a nongovernmental organisation that supports unhoused people.
Local reports said the building had since been “hijacked” by illegal landlords who rent rooms to people on an informal basis.
“This is an abandoned building, one that was hijacked and taken over by informal landlords,” Al Jazeera’s Miller reported from Johannesburg.
She said witnesses told her there were dozens of rooms on each floor with “about five people in each room”.
Deaths rise to 73, city officials say
The number of fatalities has risen to 73, according to a post by the City of Johannesburg on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The official account said the number of injured was now 52, as emergency services continued their search and recovery operation inside the building
City administration says building has undergone forensic investigation
The spokesperson for Johannesburg’s mayor has told Al Jazeera that the city administration is aware that many such “hijacked” buildings exist and are rented out.
“This particular building was previously acted upon by the city’s forensic and investigation services, [with] cases opened with the South African Police Service (SAPS) against those people who are identified as the criminal landlords,” spokesperson Mlimandlela Ndamase told Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller.
Ndamase said it was then the police’s responsibility to “ensure that they investigate and bring those people to court”.
The city owns about 30 buildings in a similar state and under similar conditions, while more than 100 are owned by private individuals and the private sector, he added.
People jumped from windows to escape fire, official says
Some of the people living in the building that caught fire threw themselves out of windows to escape the blaze and might have died because of that, a local government official told the Associated Press news agency.
Abandoned and broken-down buildings in the area are common and often taken over by crime syndicates, who then rent rooms to people desperately seeking some form of accommodation in the populous economic heart of South Africa.
Emergency officials working ‘floor by floor’ to recover bodies
“It’s a sad day indeed in the city of Johannesburg,” emergency service official Mulaudzi told Al Jazeera.
“Right now we have got a responsibility to make sure we recover all the bodies which might be trapped inside building, floor by floor,” he explained.
Mulaudzi said 43 people had been treated for minor injuries and smoke inhalation and later transported to healthcare facilities
