“I was sleeping, then I heard loud screaming. At first, I thought people were partying. But then I heard the screaming intensify, so I got up to investigate.”
This is how Xanpher George (35) remembered the start of an inferno that ravaged his neighbours’ home in Green Point on Saturday 12 July.
Having bravely rescued the neighbours who were trapped on the top floor of their house, he said a large part of the Atlantic Seaboard was without electricity on Friday and Saturday.
From his balcony George could see the flames raging from the ground floor of the three-storey house.
His immediate response was to jump into action and save his neighbours, who were on the top floor.
“All I saw were flames. I jumped over the fence. By this time the windows were shattering. The fire was spreading rapidly.”
He said he had to kick a sliding-glass door.
“The boy and an elderly woman had to jump from the third floor into the pool. But the elderly woman injured herself and landed on her back.”
George said by the time the emergency services arrived they were all out of the house.
Jermaine Carelse, spokesperson for the City’s Fire and Rescue Services, said the service received an emergency call at 12:25 about a triple-storey house alight.
According to Carelse crews from Sea Point and Roeland Street fire stations were on scene and firefighters managed to extinguish the fire by 01:10.
“The first floor of the dwelling was severely affected, and the first and second floors were slightly affected by smoke and heat.”
Carelse said three people – two women and a minor boy – were treated and transported to hospital by ambulance.
“The injuries varied from smoke inhalation, laceration to the hand and one person fell from a height.
“The cause seems to have been a flammable liquid that was poured onto the fire in the built-in fireplace on the ground floor.”
When asked about his heroic act, George said he grew up in Vereeniging, Gauteng and lived close to an open field.
“In Vereeniging we often had to be prepared for veld fires,” he explained.
George said he was treated for smoke inhalation but was doing well.
“It was crazy and scary. But I knew that helping them was the neighbourly thing to do,” he concluded.
People’s Post reached out to the family, but they did not wish to comment.
