Rob Erasmus News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Additional reporting by Victoria O’Regan Efforts to contain the out-of-control wildfire that erupted on Table Mountain on Sunday morning at around 8.45 continued throughout the night. The unforgiving inferno – suspected by the Table Mountain National Park to have been ignited by an unattended vagrant fire – burnt down a restaurant at Rhodes Memorial and damaged multiple buildings at the University of Cape Town (UCT) campus, including the library. Efforts continue to contain a vegetation fire in the mountain above UCT. The City of Cape Town is engaging in active firefighting efforts alon...

Speaking to Daily Maverick’s Our Burning Planet unit on Saturday, Rob Erasmus of Enviro Wildfire Services, the park’s independent fire investigator, said the Thursday fire had been started by a homeless person on private property near the park. “The Oudekraal fire investigation has been completed and the person responsible has been identified,” said Erasmus. “It was caused by an unattended vagrant fire,” he added. “The cause of the fire is regarded as accidental negligence. We have photographs of the origin of the fire and the person’s photograph and name. He has admitted to ...

Covered in sandy, nutrient-starved soils, scorched by fire, and pummelled by the prevailing gale-force southeaster in summer, the Cape Floral Kingdom has persisted as a land of extreme paradoxes for millenniums. Given the harsh conditions that assail life here, this world seems to have every reason not to be a botanical number cruncher’s wet dream: the untrained eye may hardly conceive that it gives refuge to nearly 20% of Africa’s flora on less than 0.5% of the continent’s surface. It seems implausible that some 9 000 plant species should thrive in these coastal extremities, 70% of whi...