Durban – Firefighters on Thursday continued battling a blaze that ripped through a factory complex in Verulam on Wednesday night.
Scores of firefighters have toiled for nearly 15 hours and are expected to be tied up at the site for most of Thursday.
Ethekwini Metro Fire Department Divisional Commander, Bruce De Gier, said the fire had started in a factory block in Verulams industrial area early on Wednesday evening.
The fire is still going and has been for some 15 hours now. It is likely that we will spend most of the day there and it is under control and we are currently damping down, he said.
De Gier explained that while several factories were razed to the ground, a lot of property was saved.
There are a couple of factories in that specific block and we did all that was possible to save the property surrounding the blaze. A large area of property was destroyed but we were able to limit the damage, he added.
One of the properties was housing a large amount of cooking oil and the other appeared to be a mattress factory but this didnt complicate matters. We used eight fire engines and 24 firefighters and attacked the blaze with water, he said.
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