A Tafelsig family's house burned down during birthday celebrations, tragically leaving one person dead.
The house in Wolfberg Street was destroyed when a fire broke out in the house on Saturday night.
Laylah Jumat, 38, says the one moment they were celebrating her mother’s 64th birthday and the next the whole house was engulfed in flames.
She says the fire broke out in one of the bedrooms after a plug in the wall exploded.
“The electricity went off, we punched in units then the plugs caught alight in the room. The wendy house at the back also burned after the two rooms burned. It was not that a flame was made, it was an electrical fault,” she says.
Laylah says due to the gale force winds experienced in the Cape, the house was destroyed in a matter of minutes.
“But Shukr to Allah that all of my family members are okay. “Everything burned out, my mother doesn’t even have a panty or her chronic medication.”
In an effort to put out the fire, Laylah's brother fell through the roof and suffered burn injuries to his body.
Sadly, their neighbour Sergio Harris, 48, perished in the fire while attempting to help the family.
His wife Wilhelmina says they could only identify her husband by his clothing.
“I didn’t even know he went in, I asked the forensics and they said there was no one but I told them my husband helped.
“Afterwards they said there is a body and when he came out with the body in the bag, I said yes it was my husband,” the hartseer woman says.
She described the father of their four daughters as a good man that would always go the extra mile to help others.
The City’s fire and rescue service spokesperson Jermaine Carelse confirms firefighters responded to the call at 10pm.
He says: “By 23:50, firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze that destroyed a formal and an informal dwelling and left 11 persons displaced.
“An adjacent formal dwelling was also partially affected by the fire. One person sustained fatal burn wounds and was declared deceased by medical personnel.”
Carelse says the cause of the fire is unknown pending an investigation from Saps.