Last week marked 13 months since an inferno swept through Thornhill near Port Elizabeth, claiming the lives of Garth van der Riet’s parents and destroying much of their farm and the family ’s livelihood.
But surviving family members are yet to receive any official closure around their parent’s gruesome deaths or the fire – which had not started on that farm.
This includes an official report on the fire, the findings of an inquest established to investigate the couple’s death and any significant disaster relief.
Extensive efforts by Weekend Post to establish the status or progress of the investigations and reports and the reasons for the delay have to date been unsuccessful.
Kouga municipality officials this week attributed this to the fact that there had been a significant number of role players attending to the disaster at the time, including different municipalities.
The blaze, which trapped and killed Myrna van der Riet, 72, and her husband Walter, 73 was one of the many devastating fires which broke out across the Knysna and Plettenburg Bay areas in the Western Cape, along with large swathes of the southern Eastern Cape last year.
Garth van der Riet, 49, who worked on his parent’s 32- hectare farm as a mechanic and farmer, said the family had yet to receive the results of the inquest into his parent’s death, the results of the investigation of the fire itself or any relief as a result of the devastating incident.
Van der Riet is now demanding answers. Among these are why his parents were not warned by authorities about the fire and an evacuation order issued to them, especially by those who were focusing their efforts on the blaze at the nearby Woodridge College, and why disaster relief funds went to affected people on the MTO Group’s forestry land – where the blaze reportedly started – and not to his family.
Van der Riet is also attempting to establish what happened to funds raised at a “Fire Hour Concert” in Port Elizabeth, held in support of victims.
Van der Riet, in the absence of any official reports, is unable to take his case forward or lodge any claims from applicable authorities.
Inquiries into the status of the inquest report showed that it was being managed by a detective based at the Thornhill police station.
Police spokesperson for that area Sergeant Majola Nkohli said he had been informed that the investigators were awaiting a particular report which was required to complete the inquest.
Nkohli did not reveal what report was outstanding. According to an official at the Sarah Baartman West Fire Protection Association, which was involved in fighting the fires, the investigation and report into the disaster was being managed by Humansdorp fire department chief fire officer Dewald Barnard.
An employee at the fire department told Weekend Post Barnard was on leave and would return to the office only in August. Barnard did not respond to attempts to contact him on his cellphone.
Kouga municipality spokesperson Laura-Leigh Randall said the authority was aware of the issue and making every effort to address Van der Riet’s concerns as speedily as possible.
“We had been in contact with the family previously through the late Kouga mayor Elza van Lingen. Challenges have arisen due to the number of role players involved. We are addressing this,” she said.