JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A nighttime fire ripped through a rundown five-story building in Johannesburg that was occupied by homeless people and squatters, leaving at least 73 people dead early Thursday, emergency services in South Africa's biggest city sa
Some of the people living in a maze of shacks and other makeshift structures inside the derelict building threw themselves out of windows to escape the fire and might have died then, a local government official said.
Seven of the victims were children, the youngest a 1-year-old, according to an emergency services spokesperson. Another 55 people were injured in the blaze, which broke out at about 1 a.m. in the heart of Johannesburg's central business district, Johannesburg Emergency Services Management spokesman Robert Mulaudzi said.
“I just saw smoke everywhere and I just ran out with this baby only,” the woman said. “I don’t have any home, and I don’t know what to do anymore.” It was the site of South Africa’s notorious “pass” office, which controlled the movement of Black people under the racist system of apartheid, according to a blue historical plaque hanging at the entrance.Decades later, the deadly fire made the building an emblem of the exclusion of poor people in Johannesburg,
The building's interior was effectively “an informal settlement” where shacks and other structures had been thrown up and people were crammed into rooms, he said. There were “obstructions” everywhere that would have made it very difficult for residents to escape the deadly blaze and which hindered emergency crews trying to work through the site, according to Mulaudzi.
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