Phillipi man in wheelchair rescued from burning house

Twenty-year old Mveya, who is wheelchair bound and deaf, was home alone while his mother accompanied her husband on a trip to the doctor. A passerby heard a loud explosion and saw fire coming from Mveya’s house. The passerby rushed over to investigate and inside he found Mveya sitting in his wheelchair surrounded by flames.

When he tried to rescue Mveya from the flames he discovered that the burglar gate was locked and so he shouted out loudly for help. Two next door neighbours heard the commotion and ran outside to assist. The three men managed to open the gate with a big hammer.

“The fire was burning us from outside the house. How much more for Sbongiseni who was trapped inside?” said Dalasi. Mveya was taken to the KTC clinic in a neighbour’s car. He was been burned on his hands, feet and legs. He has since returned home and is recovering.

When the house owner Paul Ntsuntsu and his wife returned from the doctor they were met with a completely burned down house and had lost all of their belongings. “We arrived to a scene of fire brigades and all of our neighbors gathered outside, only to find out that our home is completely destroyed! I don’t know what we’re going to do now. We’ve got nowhere else to go. We have nothing left now, even all of our blankets were destroyed in the fire.” Ntsuntsu said.

When Mveya’s mother heard that her son was taken to the clinic she too made her way to the KTC clinic to check up on her son. The fire not only destroyed Ntsuntsu’s house, but also managed to cause damage in Dalasile’s back room destroying most of the roof.

The Gugulethu fire department that responded has filed a report stating that the cause of the fire is “undetermined pending investigation”.

Neither the neighbours nor the family knows the name of the “good samaritan” passerby whose intervention saved Mveya’s life.