Officials say block may have been \u2018rented\u2019 by gangs
\nJOHANNESBURG
\nMore than 70 people were killed overnight when fire raged through a five-story apartment block in a poor area of Johannesburg, officials said on Thursday, adding that some of the victims may have been renting rooms there from criminal gangs.
\nAt noon, the munipical-owned building was still smoldering, a large part of it blackened by soot, as emergency services gathered around it and bodies lay covered in blankets on a nearby street, a Reuters reporter said.
\nLeo, a 25-year-old who survived the blaze, had been living on the second floor. He escaped along with his mother via the stairs.
\n\u201cPeople were just running away. It was dark and there was smoke. You couldn\u2019t see anything,\u201d he said.
\nAt least one person jumped to their death, said Thando le Nkosi Manzini, a student who saw the blaze from the street. \u201cI saw a guy jumping from the fourth floor,\u201d he told Reuters.
\nThe blaze, which started at around 1.30 a.m., killed at least 73 people and injured 43, the municipal government said, in one of South Africa\u2019s worst such tragedies in living memory. Johannesburg authorities initially suggested the building had been occupied by squatters.
\nBut city Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda told reporters it was owned by the municipal authorities and had been leased to charity for displaced women but had \u201cended up serving a different purpose,\u201d without giving further details.
\nLebogang Isaac Maile, the head of the Human Settlements department for Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg, later said some of the victims may have been renting from criminal gangs illegally collecting fees.
\n\u201cThere are cartels who prey on who are vulnerable people. Because some of these buildings, if not most of them, are actually in the hands of those cartels who collect rental from the people,\u201d he told reporters at the scene.
\nApartheid heritage building
\nA sign on the entrance to the gutted block showed it was a heritage building to South Africa\u2019s apartheid past, where Black South Africans came to collect their \u201cdompass\u201d \u2014 documents that would enable them to work in white-owned areas of the city.
\nAuthorities said the cause of the fire was still under investigation. Johannesburg is one of the world\u2019s most unequal cities with widespread poverty, joblessness and a housing crisis. It has about 15,000 homeless people, according to Gauteng\u2019s provincial government. Fires are common in Johannesburg, especially in poor areas.
\nOne of the poorest townships of Alexandra has seen hundreds of homes razed in several fires over the past five years.
\nThe city suffers from chronic power shortages during which many resort to candles for light and wood fires for heat.
\nMaile said the fire \u201cdemonstrates a chronic problem of housing in our province, as we\u2019ve previously said that there\u2019s at least 1.2 million people who need housing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Officials say block may have been \u2018rented\u2019 by gangs JOHANNESBURG More than 70 people were killed overnight when fire raged through a five-story apartment block in a poor area of Johannesburg, officials said on Thursday, adding that some of the victims may have been renting rooms there from criminal gangs. At noon, the munipical-owned building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352983,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-352962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n