The Western Cape is currently experiencing nice hot weather but put together with the high winds that have been predicted by the Weather Bureau it is potentially a disastrous mix causing a dire warning to be issued.  The current weather conditions predicted for Thursday may cause runaway fires in the Western Cape.

There have been several fires already, one being in the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve at Stellenbosch which was dangerously close to nearby properties. Ian Schnettler, Cape Town’s fire chief,  and his team assisted with this fire and 77 other fires across the city all on Wednesday.

Late Wednesday afternoon the fire in Stellenbosch took a turn for the worse when it headed straight for the Coetzenburg sports complex but eventually only scorching the edges. By Wednesday evening many of the university students were in Stellenbosch offering any help they could, that night the gym roof caught fire but was quickly put out before it did any more damage.

The fire made its way along the southern bank of the Eerste River causing a number of homes to be evacuated and got scarily close to the Lanzerac Hotel and surrounding multi-million rand homes.

On Thursday Stellenbosch was still burning and the fire was heading for Somerset West, this was soon under control when four helicopters began dousing the fire from the sky. "It is going a lot better today than it did yesterday (Wednesday)," said Stellenbosch fire chief Lizaan Morta on Thursday morning.

"We were terribly stretched yesterday. When this fire broke out, we had three other big fires to contend with and the Cape Winelands fire department had four."

Fires are still burning throughout the Western Cape but are being kept under control by the fire fighting teams.