Category: this is south africa

Photo of man holding dead dog is very touching, isn’t from Cape Town

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In the… well, in the “duringmath” (it’s like an aftermath, but for an ongoing event, see?) of the Muizenberg Fire, this heartbreaking photo has been doing the rounds:

deaddog …described as:

This man is holding his dog who passed on due to smoke inhalation. This picture was taken just after firefighters brought her out. Dogs aren’t just pets. Dogs are family.

or like this:

That tweet in response to this post, by the way. [link now expired. sadness.]

Yes. Very touching – and at least partially true (see below) – but this isn’t from Cape Town.

This is from Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. Here’s the story from the 31st January this year via the (paywalled) Reading Eagle:

On Friday, five dogs died after a fire broke out in the second floor of a northwest Reading, Pennsylvania row home. One of the dog’s owners, Shamel English was devastated at the loss of his pitbull named Gemini. Eleven people lost their home, reports the Reading Eagle.

The fire may have started from an electrical problem. Authorities are investigating.

Amanda Moser, 31, her husband Shamel English and Moser’s mother, Diane Fritz were home when the fire broke out. The family managed to usher their two dogs out the door, but for an unknown reason Gemini ran back into the burning home.

“She must have gotten scared and then ran straight back into the house. They (firefighters) brought her out, but by then she had passed on,” the grieving dog parent English stated. “She was more than a dog; she was a part of our family.”

Firemen tried their best to resuscitate Gemini, but it was too late. English carried her lifeless body to the porch, and grieved. English stated he found Gemini when she was only three-weeks-old wandering in an alley. She was reported to have been a sweet and friendly dog.

The other dogs that died in the fire were Chihuahuas.

English’s other pit bull named Poe survived the fire. He was safely tied up at a neighbor’s home.

Rest in peace Gemini.

It’s probably worth noting that he’s likely quite upset that he doesn’t have a house or any possessions any more either.
No, don’t throw sharp things at me. He is. You would be too, whether you had a dog or not.

So there you have it. Sad, yes. Cape Town, no.

Listen, I do appreciate the sentiment, but let’s not just pretend that every photo that fits our agenda happened this week in the Cape Town fires.

One big – huge, even – local newsworthy event doesn’t mean that you should forget your responsibility to not be a doos and share misinformation on the internet.

Please try to remember that.

Some More Fire Stuff

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RAIN: It’s raining in Cape Town. And while all the helicopter buckets in the world (which obviously aren’t in Cape Town anyway) are great, the clouds can do a much better job on the ongoing fire. Still, it’s just rain. And while it’s very welcome news: it’s actually quite a lot later than we would have liked.
Maybe He has been busy since Sunday. Mysterious ways and all that.

Hang on, he’s got that wrong, hasn’t he?

Yep. Thought so.

But it’s obviously thanks to some people’s hard praying that we’re all saved. Or something.

Ugh.

Anyway, while the wet stuff falls over the greater Cape Town area, it still only came down as “a passing shower” over some of the affected areas. So we’re definitely not out of what’s left of the woods yet.

BOTANY: In other news, here’s a great post on why what has happened, happens:

The burning of fynbos vegetation is an inevitability. It is sad that people are negatively affected but it is far from sad that the veld itself is burning. This vegetation type has been subjected to fire for millennia and the optimum fire interval is every 10-14 years. Fire is a keystone process without which many plants in the fynbos would not be able to regenerate, produce offspring or reproduce. Fynbos plants are either resprouters or reseeders: Either they can resprout after a fire has passed through or they produce seeds that are adapted to survive fire and require heat from the fire and chemical compounds from the smoke to germinate.

I’d urge you to go and read that whole post. Really interesting stuff, well-written and well-aimed at us lay-botanists.

MAP: Here’s a thing where you can see how big the fire area would be, were it to be dropped on your locality. It’s set at 3000 hectares as I write, although that was the area affected on Monday morning – I’ve watched it move much further since then. But it does give some idea.

shefffire

PHOTO: Finally, still my favourite photo of this whole thing (and there have been a lot of photos of this whole thing):

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I don’t know who took it or where it’s taken, but it just indicates the scale of the task that the local firefighters have been up against.

Igloo Ice: Unsung heroes

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There are a lot of people helping out the VWS right now, and a lot of it is being publicised on social media. Fair play, I say. You deserve credit for your efforts and in the commercial world, publicity is your credit.

I noted that the firefighters were requesting ice from people. It is overwhelmingly hot in Cape Town today, and I’m sure that people are emptying their freezers as we speak. But that might not be enough, so I emailed Igloo Ice in Montague Gardens to ask if they could help.

I got this back:

Hi 6k,

We have donated ice to Tokai and someone has come to collect more from Kommetjie. There are more scheduled collections for this afternoon.

We have also offered to donate a bakkie load of ice to the Hout Bay fire department but they have told us they are fine for now.

Thanks,

Kind Regards

Harry Georgopoulos
Igloo Ice Cape Town

I don’t think Igloo Ice do social media, so you probably won’t see their name and brand plastered all over your Facebook and your Twitter. It’s people like them that are the unsung heroes in all of this.

I realise that this isn’t a huge blog with the pulling power of certain others we might name, but just from me: next time you’re considering getting in some ice cubes, crushed ice, solid water blocks, dry ice, ice baths or polystyrene containers for your party, company or event, remember that Igloo Ice were the ones quietly helping out the Cape Town firefighters behind the scenes.

You might like to consider sharing this post to let others know as well.

We Put This Thermometer In The Sun In Cape Town. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.

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It’s a hot day in Cape Town. This happens fairly regularly around this time of year, this being Cape Town and it being summer. Today was meant to get to 38 or 39ºC, depending on whom you chose to believe. But when we hung a calibrated and certified thermometer out of our lab window, we got a temperature of 41.1ºC.

This was in the shade, but it was obviously not in a Stevenson Screen – the official vented white box, 1.5m from the ground, which provides the standard conditions (in the shade, out of the wind, away from surfaces radiating heat etc) for measuring weather. But we don’t have a Stevenson Screen. We were just messing around hanging a thermometer out of a second floor window while we should have been working eating our lunch.

And then we hung it in the sun. Now, to be in the sun, it did have to be a bit closer (within 30cm, perhaps) to a wall which had also been in the sun, but still – if you were where the thermometer was at 12:46pm this afternoon, this is what you would have been experiencing:

IMG_20150303_124816

Blimey.

So no, despite my scientific leanings, this wasn’t scientific.
But our quick and dirty experiment does seem to indicate that Cape Town is bloody hot today.

Drink much, stay safe.