Surge in dangerous power lines
2007-03-22
Malané Bosman
THE traditional paraffin stove or candle left burning are no longer the biggest fire risks in informal settlements in Drakenstein.
Electrical causes are fast becoming the biggest danger to those men, women and children who do not wake up before a home is gutted by fire.
Putting thousands of lives in peril, are those home owners who have a legal supply of municipal power, but who then sell power to a neighbour or a friend.
That friend might live a kilometres away.
Apart from the dangers of an overloaded powerpoint in the legal recipient’s home, cables then criss-cross the sky and burrow under the ground for long distances.
“The need for power to cool a refrigerator or heat a stove, outweighs the criminality and the danger for shack dwellers,” a municipal official said.
According to officials at Drakenstein’s fire department, the crow’s nests on overhead telephone and street light cables are dead give-aways.
So too are the cobwebs of lines that litter the sky.
Residents simply tie a stone to a line, and catapult it over a telephone cable. The elevation is necessary for their informal cables to cross over streets and buildings.
As soon as the spaghetti cables reach the ground, they are buried and then run underground to hide their destination.
Once on the ground, it is also not easily detected.
“When you know what to look for, it is possible to find the snaking lines,” a fire brigade official said.
“They run under the low bridges, over pavements and amongst homes. It is extremely dangerous, but the offenders seem not to care.”
For Jan Coetzee, head of Drakenstein’s electricity department, it is a Catch 22 situation.
“We can sweep the area in the morning, hacking away all the illegal cables. And by afternoon the cables have been restored and the stoves and television sets are running again.
“To top it all, angry residents threaten the municipal officials who wish to remove the wires, make working conditions extremely dangerous.”
According to Coetzee, households who sell power illegally have in the past been reprimanded, but without success. Harsher measures are now in the pipeline.
“The procedures for slapping fines on offenders, are now being discussed with the judiciary.”
One of the worst sections is the squatter area alongside Drommedaris Street in Mbekweni. There some 25 cables have been discovered leading simultaneously from one home.
“The misappropriation of power boils down to theft and the resulting fire which causes deaths are nothing less than murder,” a fireman said.
“We would like to see convictions.”
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