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| << January23, 2006 - Turtle Essays edition no 160 dated 23.01.2006 |
February06, 2006 - Turtle Essays edition no 162 dated >> |
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Turtle Essays Edition no 161 dated 30th January 2006 ** Tours around Cape Town Turtle Essays in conjunction with a local tour operator offers tours to many of the places written about in these ezines. In many instances I will be guiding the tours offered so please contact me to enquire about them. Tours are undertaken in airconditioned mini buses and private tours for you and your party can be arranged. Hotel accommodation and other travel needs can also be arranged if required. We look forward to hearing from you. To enquire email me at tourinfo@freeautobot.com ** Do you enjoy this weekly ezine? Please tell your friends about it and send them to http://www.zinester.com/mpb/ml_fs.cgi?topic=50058 to become regular readers ** In this edition; Editor's Blurb Table Mountain fire Seal in Distress ** Editors Blurb Hi there folks. Welcome to all my new and regular readers. With all the fires in and around Cape Town I have plenty of material to write articles about. This week's article covers the latest fire which raged on Table Mountain. I'm placing a number of photos on my webpage to be found at http://www.turtlesa.com/ezine161.html for you to see. After this last week my life should start settling down into a routine again. My daughter who finished school at the end of 2005 has left for London for a year and has left a gaping hole in our lives here in Cape Town. Where three bedrooms were filled with noisy kids over the past 27 years there is only one that is still occupied and this one will be vacated shortly when my second son leaves home. It's sad when this happens but I suppose life must go on. Marketers are strange people especialy those who are really scraping the barrel. Email addresses for people to respond to things advertised on my websites are being used to send me advertisements. The same goes for my blog where people are stealing my blogspace by using the comments column to post their ads. Enough! Have a good week and enjoy the articles. Geoff Fairman. ** Table Mountain Fire Theres nothing left of our mountains and fynbos. This week we have had another round of fires here in Cape Town and the Peninsula is devastated. Cape Town is normally beautiful at this time of the year with mountains full of lovely green vegetation . After all the fires that have raged around Cape Town over the past few months all you see is blackened mountain slopes with ash and dust blowing off them. It's terrible to think that most of these fires are caused by people who do not care about Cape Town. Smokers were the cause of the latest fires, the one near the Goodwood prison and the other one on Table Mountain. The Goodwood fire started on the verge of the N1 when a non caring motorist flicked a burning cigarette butt out of a car window. The butt was caught by the howling south easterly wind and ended up in dry grass on the verge of the road. Before anyone knew what had happened the grass on the verge was alight and soon the veld inside the prison grounds was burning. When the flames got into the Port Jackson bush which is a known fire hazard and an alien plant it took off and soon there was a raging inferno being pushed along by gale force winds. Fire fighters took a number of hours to control the fire and managed to stop it before it moved into the residential area close by. The shock of the week however was when a fire started on Table Mountain. This fire was caused by a non caring motorist flicking a burning cigarette out of a car window and then driving away. The howling wind once again blew the butt into the dry grass and soon Tafelberg road on the slopes of Table Mountain was a raging inferno with the fire spreading rapidly up the mountain near Platteklip Gorge. Unfortunately for the motorist who just happened to be a British tourist this one small cigarette will stay with him for the rest of his life as he was arrested for his actions. The fire that he inadvertently caused raged along the whole of Table Mountain burning everything in its path. When it reached the lower cable station where a fire had raged a week or two earlier it simply jumped this section of the mountain and continued across to Lions Head which was also burnt. Helicopters were called in to waterbomb the burning slopes of the mountain but fought a losing battle as they tried to stem the flow of the fire. As the fire burnt down the mountain it threatened houses built on the slopes near Vredehoek and many people had to evacuate their homes. Fortunately fire fighters managed to stave off the fires near properties on the mountain slopes. The damage to the flora and fauna on the mountain is massive but fortunately if the fynbos is a couple of years old it needs to be burned to allow seeds which have been dropped over the years to germinate. In certain areas where the flora has been burnt in the last year or two, problems could exist as the plantlife has not had time to spread its seed. Many plants on endangered lists could die out when this happens. The Cape Doctor as the south east wind is known was the main contributing factor of the fire spreading but at the same time was also the saviour of many lives. On any given day if the wind is not blowing there will be hundreds of visitors either climbing the mountain or taking the cableway to the top. When the winds are strong the cable cars do not run for safety reasons. It's also unpleasant to climb the mountain so as luck would have it there were few people on the mountain when the fire started. Those people at the top when the fire was spotted, were soon rounded up by the staff of the cable company and transported to the bottom of the mountain to safety. Unfortunately however an elderly lady who was hiking on the mountain was caught in the smoke from the fires and died of smoke inhallation. A number of other hikers were feared missing as a number of motor cars were found burnt out on Tafelberg road after the fire. The man arrested for starting the fire has to face another serious charge, that of culpable homicide as a result of the death of the elderly lady (another British tourist) on the mountain. Cape Town is striving to bring visitors to our shores to see the beauty of Cape Town and of our country. At the same time visitors and locals are trying their best to destroy this beauty by throwing burning cigarette butts out of car windows and causing terrible fires. In my opinion cigarette butts are litter, burning cigarette butts are a death sentence to plantlife, animals which live on the mountains and sometimes even human life. Why should we the public have to put up with the bad habits of people who are too lazy to put their litter in the proper place when they are finished with it. Those people caught littering in any form should face the full force of the law and pay dearly for their actions. Only then will our flora and fauna be safe from the threats it now faces. Geoff Fairman ** Seal in distress. Please visit my webpage at http://www.turtlesa.com/ezine161a.html to see the photos and article about the seal. This is another of those stories where people who litter are causing distress to Cape Town's sea life. Geoff Fairman. ** For my personal details, contact address, and warnings regarding products advertised in this ezine please read the disclaimers which can be found at: http://www.turtlesa.com/Disclaimer.html |
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| << January23, 2006 - Turtle Essays edition no 160 dated 23.01.2006 |
February06, 2006 - Turtle Essays edition no 162 dated >> |
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