In South Africa’s informal settlements, fire can be devastating, spreading rapidly among densely packed temporary housing. In the sprawling township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, five people died and a further 4,000 were made homeless by a single blaze on New Year’s Day 2013. Local government figures show that, in the capital city alone, the annual total of more than 1,500 fires claims about 100 lives.
Things are beginning to change, however, as local companies find innovative solutions to fight fire in the country’s estimated 1.4m informal dwellings.
The traditional use of open flames for cooking, heat and light in such homes makes ordinary smoke detectors ineffective, creating regular false alarms, explains David Gluckman, CEO of South African startup Lumkani. His company has therefore developed a fire detection system specifically designed for this type of housing. Detectors alert emergency services and the local community by sending an SMS. The system has been installed in 8,000 homes across the country.
“Our device is a heat detector measuring the rate of rise in temperature,” says Gluckman. “It also is a networked device that communicates with nearby detectors to trigger a community-wide alert and trigger a rapid scaled response from neighbours.”
The combination of early-warning detection and SMS has proved highly effective. More than 75% of users say thedevices have prevented fires. The firm estimates that 400 homes have been saved since 2014.
Lumkani is not the only company seeking innovative solutions for fire prevention in poor housing. The Khusela Ikhaya project has developed specifically formulated fire-retardant paint that forms an expanding heat shield in the event of a blaze to slow down its spread.
So far, the paint has been used in 1,100 homes across six informal settlements. Co-founder Ashley Stemmett says the firm’s goal is to paint 500,000 homes by 2020.
“The impact on those families is immense,” he says. “What many do not realise is the devastating effects to [people who are] already on the breadline. They may lose all their clothing, school books, documents and savings; not to mention fridges, furniture and appliances – often still being paid off on hire purchase.”
To apply its paint to informal dwellings, the Khusela Ikhaya project hires and trains unemployed local residents. The aim is blanket coverage, particularly in hotspot areas, to ensure fires do not spread out of control quickly.
“When exposed to extreme heat, the paint expands to form a heat shield of sorts, capable of sufficiently slowing down the rapid transmission of fire from one dwelling to the next,” explains Stemmett. “This will allow neighbouring occupants more time to escape harm’s way, and for fire services to extinguish blazes before large numbers of dwellings are consumed.”
The paint proved its worth when a fire broke out at a Khusela pilot site in May. Only 10 of the 400 tightly knit homes were burned. Stemmett says the painting projects have also become a catalyst for change in these areas.
The Lumkani devices have also been of huge benefit to residents. Khayelitsha resident Asiphe Mpengesi describes a recent incident when the alarm was activated in her neighbour’s empty house: “We heard the device sound and we all went out to look for where the fire was coming from. The other community members were also looking, because they heard the sound of the device.”
The speed with which the residents reacted meant the fire was quickly contained, she says. “We tried to put it out from our taps using buckets, but we also called the firefighters. When they arrived, we had already put out the fire and they just did the finishing up.”
