Roles of disaster management, fire services highlighted

GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - In line with the country’s Public Service Month campaign, the Garden Route District Municipality’s (GRDM) Corporate Services Department on Friday 16 September held an event where the GRDM Disaster Management and Fire Services representatives presented their operations to staff through a virtual platform hosted from the municipality’s Council Chambers.

Gerhard Otto, GRDM manager for Disaster Management, during his presentation said that disaster management is a continuous multi-disciplinary process of planning and implementation of measures aimed at being prepared for emergencies and disasters.

The Garden Route is prone to risks such as veld fires, various types of drought, flood disasters, landslides, epidemics and spills.

The Garden Route Emergency Call Centre is the first line of communication for incidents that need to be reported to the District Disaster Management Centre. The call centre receives about 20 000 EMS calls and approximately 5 000 fire and municipal calls per month.

Otto said part of mitigating the effects of disasters, early warning systems have been put in place in order to communicate any severe weather early warnings to the public. These include the municipality’s social media networks and e-mails to all local municipalities and response agencies/ role-players as well as ward councillors.

Since 2017, the unit rolled out various projects such as the GRDM Volunteers Corps establishment, Rural Settlement Database, the Greenbook implementation, as well as CityRap implementation.

“We have completed the mapping of priority wetlands and river ecosystems, we have established a district food pantry and reviewed and updated the Garden Route Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for 2022. The team is currently busy with the revision and the updating of the Garden Route District Coastal Management Programme 2021," said Otto.

They also started with the clearing of invasive alien vegetation.

He said there a still several challenges that still need to be addressed, such as climate change, strategic water management planning, structured and integrated invasive plant and predator animal eradication, delivery equitable service to all populations groups, and addressing poverty through job creation.

Fire Service

Deon Stoffels, chief fire officer of the GRDM, said the Fire Services section is responsible for veld, mountain chemical fires, which include hazardous materials spills and leakages.

"The service primarily focus on preventing the outbreak or spread of fires; fighting and extinguishing fires; the protection of life or property against a fire or other threatening danger; rescuing of life or property from a fire or other danger and any other function connected with these."

Stoffels stressed the importance of creating awareness and educating communities about the dangers of fire.

“GRDM Fire Service creates awareness of the dangers associated with fire in all communities and we furthermore educate Garden Routers, visitors and personnel alike to reduce the threats of fire. We pride ourselves for informing, educating and creating awareness to rural, remote and particularly young children, as they naturally take the message home.’’

"Developing and training personnel, ensuring that our assets and resources are managed and maintained, and our response time to attend to incidents are kept at the shortest possible time," said Stoffels.

The team furthermore record and document all emergencies and incidents that they attend to in an attempt to do further research and learn from it.

GRDM Fire Services has a staff component of 41 staff members stationed at the main fire base in George, as well as the Hessequa station based in Riversdale and the Kannaland station based in Ladismith.

Apart from fighting the usual fires, another new phenomenon was added to the team’s list of firefighting efforts in 2020, when they had to fight a peat/underground fire for the first time in the Bergfontein, Albertinia area, for six weeks.

He explained: “This is a phenomenon that is happening all over the world, but not often in South Africa. When wetlands are compromised, it develops into a peatland,” said Stoffels.

He said although it was a new experience for their team, they all learnt immensely about the aspects relating to this type of fire as well as to how crucial a wetland and / or peatland are within the ecosystem. “In the past we would deem a fire to be halted at this particular point, but we now know that at all cost to prevent fires from burning here."

Gerhard Otto, GRDM manager for Disaster Management, sharing the operations of the unit at the event.