Kouga municipality’s firefighter mayor: ‘I just tried to help where I could'

For the past week, Kouga Local Municipality’s executive mayor Hattingh Bornman has not slept much. Raging veld fires broke out in his municipality, fuelled by unbearably hot weather and strong winds, destroying thousands of hectares of farmland, some houses and infrastructure.

Soon, the videos he made to update residents – with his deputy mayor Timothy Jantjies working as the occasional cameraman – went viral. The man cracking jokes with the firefighters, providing updates and keeping everyone calm, from residents and visitors to the busy holiday towns, soon became a favourite.

“This is Enrico,” he said in one video, pointing at a fireman covered in ash.

“Enrico is one of our senior firefighters, and he usually looks much better when he comes to work,” Bornman said to widespread laughter among the tired emergency responders. In another, he and Jantjies got drenched by water from the bomber plane. “Well, that is a free shower,” he laughed.

Bornman said he did only what he could to help.

“My role was to tell people what was going on, but I also wanted to see what the fires looked like.”

At one stage, he was even directing traffic.

Himself a firefighter since high school, he knew his way around a fire line. “When I was 16, I started working as a volunteer firefighter here at the Humansdorp Fire Station,” he said.

“I worked with our current fire chief, who was then the station commander in St Francis. That is where I learnt about fires. I worked night shifts right through Grade 10, 11 and 12. Many times, if there was a fire at night, I would come back home at 6am or 7am and go to school. I went to school, falling asleep and stinking of smoke,” he said with a laugh.

“In the middle of all this, my mother-in-law phoned me to ask if I wanted my old firefighting overalls because she still had them on the farm,” he joked.

Kouga Local Municipality includes Jeffreys Bay, St Francis Bay, Humansdorp, Cape St Francis, Hankey, Patensie and Thornhill – an area where for the past week, fires were burning almost everywhere.

The first sign of trouble was at the Melkhout Substation in Humansdorp, where a small fire broke out a week ago. This caused a major electricity outage. “I thought, let me just update people because this isn’t just a normal power outage,” he said. “We managed to get the electricity back around 11 pm, but we could never get that fire properly under control. The wind was blowing so strongly.”

Read more: ‘I stared the fire in its eyes’ — residents recall ordeals as fight against Kouga blazes continues

Fuelled by extremely dry conditions and very strong winds, the fire had spread all the way to the Kabeljous River near Jeffreys Bay.

“At the same time, a fire broke out in St Francis. A man was cutting a tree, and the tree fell on an Eskom cable that set the veld on fire,” he said. “It was so dry, and the wind was blowing so strongly. That fire just spread as fast as any fire could spread,” he said.

But, he said, Humansdorp Fire Chief Dewald Barnard is a man of such experience and knowledge about fire that he had full trust that the situation would be handled in an exemplary way.

Since the DA came into power in the Kouga Municipality 10 years ago, another two devastating fires have struck the area. In 2015/2016, fires swept through St Francis Bay and again in 2017/2018. At the time, Bornman served as the council’s speaker under Horatio Hendricks.

Stretched resources

“There were some scary times with this [latest] fire,” he said. “If it were one big fire in one place, we would have been fine because we have four fire stations and we could have focused all our resources in one place,” he said. But they had to fight very large fires in three places. “Our resources became very thin on the ground,” he said.

When the third fire broke out, Bornman opened a joint operations centre.

“I told the guys we won’t be able to handle this as a normal fire. We all agreed that we would need resources from other municipalities,” he said, “and air support, because in two places the fire went into the kloofs and we couldn’t get there.

“I think on Friday morning we said if we can get 80 more firefighters, we will be in a strong position to beat this fire,” he said.

“That afternoon, we had 76 firefighters reporting for duty from Working on Fire and other municipalities.” At the time, they had just fewer than 70 firefighters.

But they had consistent maintenance on their side. “During the off-season, we checked all the fire hydrants. I don’t know what we would have done if those were not working.”

“I just wanted to be there for Barnard and for acting city manager Dawie de Jager so that they can make fast decisions, especially when financial resources are needed,” Bornman said.

“Both of these people went out of their way to get additional resources and dispatch it to the correct place,” he said.

“It helped us that this is not a huge municipality, so we knew on whose farm it was burning and so on. It helped us get entrance to farms,” he said. But he admits that it is hard for him to choose between being a firefighter and a mayor. “I also helped a little bit to put the fire out here and there,” he said.

“I wanted to see where the fire was and what it looked like because it is difficult to make decisions if you don’t know what you are dealing with,” he said.

Aid pours in

“The help we received still baffles my mind,” he said. “Farmers drove with the bakkies all the way from Kirkwood to come help. The firefighters from the Dr Beyers Naude Local Municipality (Graaff-Reinet) immediately came to help us because we helped them last time. Firefighters also came from the Blue Crane Municipality and firefighters from the Amatole District. It was really so special,” Bornman said.

“Even the guys from Transnet brought their water truck to help us,” he said. Gift of the Givers also sent their water truck and a bomber plane for a short while.

“We had their truck here to the end, and they helped us distribute food and drinks to the firefighters,” he said.

Working on Fire ‘amazing’

“I also want to tell you how amazing the Working on Fire firefighters were. Every night, when the wind was a bit quieter, they would walk the fireline and make sure that the flareups were put out.”

Read more: Devastation and heartbreak — Kouga municipality the latest to be gripped by blazes

Two helicopters and another bomber plane, one of only six in the country, arrived soon from Working on Fire.

“I also want to thank the municipal manager for the Sarah Baartman District, Unathi Daniels, who really assisted so much in getting additional resources here,” he said. They also helped with additional financial resources for jet fuel and water,” he said.

He said he also wanted to single out the work of the Disaster Volunteer Group in St Francis Bay. “Liezl Clause helped us organise the logistics around air support.

“She did it during previous fires as well. She was absolutely exceptional in carrying out our instructions. We would say: ‘We need a chopper here’ and five minutes later we would see the water falling,” he said.

“And her connections were absolutely gold. We tried ourselves to get support from the Air Force, but their helicopters were busy in the Western Cape. But she found two helicopters and a bomber plane for us.”

Just for air support, the municipality had to pay R3-million. “We are still busy determining the damage. It is a long process, and there is a lot of paperwork. It is a long process,” he said.

Communities step up

Bornman said a day or two into their firefighting operation, before he knew it, people arrived from Nelson Mandela Bay with a camper van, parked at the fire stations and were making coffee for everybody.

“I feel bad to single out people, but the owner of a big restaurant in Jeffreys Bay arrived here and just started managing logistics for us – donations, food and drinks. There were so many of them that it was absolutely critical to the success of this,” he said.

Doctors set up a medical tent to help firefighters with Vitamin B drips, eyedrops and treating minor burns. “I am grateful that our firefighters suffered no serious injuries,” he said.

“Next thing I knew, the guys who drive the sewage tankers in our municipality arrived here. They are not firefighters, but we needed more water and they were ready to help.

“We asked them to use their trucks for additional water, but next we knew, they were also spraying the fire with water. The guys who drove the water trucks parked in the veld, and they slept there in their trucks – especially towards the end, they monitored the flare-ups for us. They are amazing people, all of them,” Bornman said.

He said the municipal mechanics also worked 24 hours a day to fix damaged fire trucks.

“I arrived just after midnight, here at the joint operations centre one night, and they were busy changing a tyre on a truck,” he said, and working on a gearbox and other repairs.

More disturbingly, it appears that the cause of at least one fire can be linked to copper cable thieves burning the plastic sheathing off their loot. “As recently as Wednesday, we caught one of them,” Bornman said.

“He set a huge piece of land on fire. The fire department was there, and the neighbourhood watch… and they caught him quickly. But the police just refused to open a criminal docket. I was shocked,” he said. “I am actually very angry about this. We make cases as we find them.”

While Bornman always looked upbeat throughout his updates, he said that earlier this week, as the fires continued to rage for a fifth day, he did become a bit despondent. “I thought this must really stop now,” he said.

“We just got the fires under control, and then a guy cut a tree that fell on an electricity cable, causing another fire. That fire got out of control very fast. My priorities were not to lose human lives and to make sure that the fires didn’t come close to our towns. Here in Humansdorp, we stopped it 200m away,” he said.

He said Paradise Beach on the outskirts of Jeffreys Bay was also a close call.

“If we let it burn for another 15 minutes, we would have had to evacuate that area,” he said. “St Francis, we also managed to stop it on the outskirts. We did lose a few properties, though,” he said.

If he could choose again, would Bornman still be a fireman or was he happy as mayor? Bornman burst out laughing at the question.

“Well, I would like to do both. It would be difficult. I like the action. But for now, there are big things that need doing.

“My dream is that Kouga will become an example of what South Africa can look like,” he said. DM