Hout Bay firefighters assist with 43 maternity cases in 2025

Firefighters at the Hout Bay Fire Station have assisted in delivering 43 babies this year. Serving as a first aid post for the community, the station has gained a reputation as a reliable, 24-hour point of call for medical emergencies ranging from childbirth to traumatic injuries.

Sitting down with Daily Maverick, the Hout Bay firefighters reflected on the fast-paced nature of life at the station. In one case, a member of the team delivered a breech baby in the back of a car in the fire engine bay. In another, the crew assisted a woman who had not realised she was pregnant to deliver twins.

“It brings that job satisfaction… When [the mothers] give birth successfully, you can give yourself a pat on the back… We perform miracles in that little [first aid] room that we’ve got over there,” said Paul Nefdt, a firefighter who was assigned to Hout Bay because of his skills as a medic.

Firefighter Zulpha Slamdien said that assisting with births was often a “positive” experience. She said helping to bring new life into the world stood in stark contrast to some of the traumatic injuries and losses the crews saw at fires.

“With maternity, it’s a miracle. It’s a new life brought into the world. Everybody’s smiling,” she said.

Serving the community 

Hout Bay is somewhat separated from the rest of Cape Town, nestled in a valley amid mountainous terrain. These geographic barriers, along with the high burden of health needs in the coastal community, have contributed to the fire station becoming a hotspot for primary emergency care cases.

“With the general medical calls in this area, a lot of the reason people come here is because of the lack of other … 24-hour [government medical] facilities. There is quite a good clinic around the corner, but they don’t want to stand in three-, four-hour queues ... and the closest hospital is Victoria Hospital in Wynberg, which is quite a distance from here,” said the station commander, James Roberston.

The nearest maternity hospital was the Retreat Day Hospital, about 20km away, said Sean Evans, a senior firefighter. He noted that the role of the firefighters in a medical emergency was to stabilise the patient so that when the ambulance crews arrived, they could take over treatment and transport the patient to a hospital.

“Some of [the prospective mothers], they'll call for an ambulance. They don’t have transport to get to the hospital, and then it gets to the point where the labour pains are too much … and… [they decide to] come down [to the station], because the whole community knows about us,” said Evans.

“When people come down here, we can deal with whatever we have been trained for. We’ve got enough medical gear and equipment to deal with anything from gunshots to assaults, asthmatics to births.”

Staying ‘switched on’ 

The Hout Bay firefighters were always in the “hot zone”, whether at the scene of a fire or in the station, said firefighter Nigel Janson.

“There are a lot of times we come back from a fire call, and there’s two guys at the station doing CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation]. So, we’re literally rushing from shacks alight, a house alight, straight into CPR,” he said.

Fellow firefighter Faeem Sonday said that while the crews had two minutes to prepare and leave the station when responding to a fire call, they had only seconds to respond to a medical emergency brought to the station.

“We’re based here for 24 hours a shift. We have three shifts. For that 24 hours, no matter what time of day, the light can go on and it’s a trauma incident — it can be a gunshot, it can be a maternity,” said Sonday.

“The guys here are very much switched on. We jump into action as fast as possible … because we’re dealing with life straight away.”

The firefighters have access to a round-the-clock trauma service that provides group or one-on-one sessions to those in need. DM