Lerato Mbhiza
There is a possibility that more bodies may be recovered from the building in the Johannesburg CBD where 74 people died on Thursday, Gauteng Emergency Services said.
Gauteng EMS spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said the K9 unit was deployed earlier on Friday morning to “sweep the building”.
“Now it’s our turn we have our firefighters that will start from the first to the fifth floor. The main reason is that we want to ensure that there are no outstanding bodies which we might still recover.
“There is a possibility that we might find other bodies, hence we don’t want to find a situation we leave here and we get called back that someone recovered bodies.”
Once EMS officials have done a clean sweep of the building, the scene will be handed over to the SA Police Service (Saps), Mulaudzi said.
The Gauteng Department of Health (GDH) said 64 of the victims were burnt beyond recognition during Thursday morning’s devastating fire at a building in the Johannesburg CBD.
The fire claimed the lives of at least 74 people, including 12 children.
The Department’s Acting CEO for Pathology Services Thembalethu Mphahlaza said only 12 bodies are identifiable.
“We realised that out of the 74 bodies that we collected, we only have 12 bodies that can be identifiably viewed, but 62 of these bodies are burnt beyond recognition. Hence it will take a while to finalise the process of harvesting the DNA samples from those bodies.”
The department has called on the families of the deceased to come and identify the victims who were not burnt beyond recognition.
Of those killed in the fire, 24 were women, 40 were men, and the gender of 10 bodies couldn’t be identified. The bodies have since been transported to the Diepkloof morgue in Soweto.
Furthermore the City of Johannesburg Speaker Colleen Makhubele said some of the residents who lived in the Marshalltown building that burnt down refused to go to hospital and temporary shelters for fear of the aid being a ruse to deport them.
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