Tag: table mountain fire

An odd morning

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Woke up to news of Stage 6 (six) loadshedding and the sound of a spotter plane and fire helicopters overhead.

This isn’t good.

The Stage 6 loadshedding is “retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech”, according to some online pundits. But this seems a little silly to me. The Budget speech was postponed four days ago. Why wait until 1am on a Sunday morning if you are a vindictive ruling party wanting to make a point? Who – apart from the most weird of tinfoil hat wearers (see above) – is going to put those two and two together to make four? Far more likely is that the power grid – held together with vinegar and brown paper borrowed from Jack of the famous nursery rhyme – fell over when someone forgot to tie the string properly.

Others online suggested that the loadshedding was somehow the City of Cape Town’s fault, arguing that “Cape Independence can’t come soon enough”, while conveniently forgetting that a massive 0.26% of the 58.64% of voters who turned out, actually supported that idea in last year’s election.

Either way, any way, whatever: it’s a shlep being without power for 12 hours a day. Again.

The fire is on Table Mountain, probably about 4km from our place, but it’s heading up and away from us at the moment. “African prayer groups” was the wildest conspiracy theory I saw for this one, but why not “retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech”? Cyril’s place is literally 1km from where it mysteriously started in the early hours of the morning.

Either way, it’s far from sorted yet, and the spotter plane is still circling overhead, endlessly spotting.

The best way to get around these problems is to try and ignore the drone of the plane and the lack of electricity, and go to the gym. And so that’s what I did. And it was as I left the gym that I thought I saw the silhouette of a woodpecker in a tree in the back garden.

As you do.

But no, woodpeckers do have a rather distinctive shape. So I wandered closer to investigate and yes:

The old bird proof/ID photography policy thing worked well here. Get any photo first, no matter how bad, and then try to work from there. That’s what this is: the first bit. I gave up on the work from there bit, as I was knackered from the gym.

And that’s a female Olive Woodpecker (Dendropicos grisocephalus). Not uncommon, apparently, but a first for me, and certainly a first for me in our garden. The male was there too, but he didn’t hang around for a hastily taken photo like his missus. She was also gone pretty soon afterwards (probably as retribution from the Government for the VAT increase not going through in the Budget speech), but a nice spot and one to watch out for again.

I’m looking forward to an afternoon of napping and football watching, now that the odd morning is done.

Idiots on the mountain again

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Lightning over the weekend started a few fires in Table Mountain National Park. Some of them are still ongoing, sweeping across the top of the mountain from our side down towards the Back Table area above Camps Bay and Hout Bay.

And last night, there was even some local cliff face action: ironically pretty much where I took this photo just a year ago. This was a quick cellphone pic from a car park in Claremont.

But that was nothing compared to what was going on just out of our view, on top:

And our brave firefighting crews are out there fighting the fires. Although that is exactly what they signed up for, I guess. Still, rather them than me.

There are plenty of idiots out there with them though. Despite the fact that there is clearly a fire (see social media posts, news reports passim., not to mention actually just looking at the mountain), the hikers are out there putting themselves in danger and diverting resources away from fighting the fires.

We’ve seen this before.

Where else in the world except South Africa would you see the paragraph at the bottom of this post?

Table Mountain National Park Management has closed the Platteklip Gorge trail effective immediately, as the fire is actively burning in the vicinity of Maclear’s Beacon. As visibility is poor in the area due to low cloud coverage, there is a great risk to users unexpectedly walking into the fire line.

Further closures include:
? All hiking trails between Newlands and Constantia Nek
? All trails leading to Maclear’s Beacon and the Back Table
? Trails leading from the area between Camps Bay, Hout Bay, and Orangekloof
? Platteklip George trail leading up to Maclear’s Beacon

The priority remains the safety of residents, hikers, and firefighting personnel, therefore we encourage users to refrain from accessing these areas. SANParks is appealing to the public to please respect the trail closures in order not to endanger anyone or hamper firefighting efforts.

What sort of person, having just been told that the trail is closed because they face “a great risk of unexpectedly walking into the fire line”, then needs to be reminded that that means they shouldn’t walk along the closed trail?

We all know what sort of person. There are plenty of them around.

I just find it sad that these potential Darwin Award nominees can’t just be allowed to get on with being Darwin Award nominees.

Second image Brandon Louw via VWS Facebook page

Sprinkles around the mountain

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Stop the world. I want to get off.

I did mention the recent trend of people using TikTok to get their news, the utter nonsense that is on there, and the terrifying prospect of that nonsense influencing everyday life and – more worryingly – the upcoming election.

Here’s more evidence that reality and common sense is far distanced from that particular platform.

After the Table Mountain fire yesterday – and as an aside, I’m actually surprised that no-one has accused the water-bombing helicopters of spreading “chemtrials” yet – this genius idea:

Sprinkles? What? Like on a birthday cake?

But I’m guessing he means sprinklers. Like you use to water your garden. And stop it burning.

And in theory, it’s a great idea. Until you actual put a tiny, weeny, miniscule bit of thought into it.

Aside from the issues with water supply, infrastructure, the inevitable theft and the funding of the whole thing, there’s the sheer scale.

Table Mountain National Park is 221km2.
That’s twice the size of Manchester.

And if you’ve ever been to Manchester, you might know that there are (more than) a couple of football pitches there. And each of them requires about 10 sprinkles… sprinklers… to keep them moist and stop them burning.

Working on the basis that a football pitch is about 100x50m, and therefore has an area of 0.005km2, we can do a quick rudimentary calculation and say that Table Mountain National Park is the same area as 44,200 football pitches, and would therefore require close on half a million “sprinkles” to cover it.

So, there you go.

Why don’t they put water sprinkles around the mountain? Because it’s a frankly ridiculous idea, and if you had a brain, you’d have worked that out pretty quickly.

So I wonder what stopped that happening?