At both these facilities green waste is deposited and the fires burning there are exceptionally complex due to the fact that the fire becomes deep seated and travels underground for considerable distances. The assistance of heavy earth moving equipment is needed to open the areas of concern to expose the hot areas so that it can be cooled and extinguished. Over weekends and public holidays it is difficult to obtain such heavy earth moving equipment to assist, even though we have a supplier on standby.

Various challenges were faced with the fire at the Louis Fourie waste disposal facility, one being that the machine, supplied by the contractor to do the excavation work, broke down on a few occasions. Furthermore, the Fire Department was stretched to their limit with other major fires within the municipal area over the last week. That meant that a decision had to be made to leave the fire area of the waste disposal facility as it was deemed to be contained to attend to other fires, fires that threatened lives and property. With limited resources the men and women of the Fire Department had to prioritise and deemed saving lives and preventing loss of houses (formal as well as informal), massive damage to vegetation and livestock as a priority above a burning waste disposal facility. The crews returned to Louis Fourie waste disposal facility after they tended to the other fires.