When a frantic mother rushed to the door of her burning shack, her three young children still inside, she expected to hear screaming.
But there was only a deafening silence.
She knew then that her “babies”, aged five, three and 11 months, must have either passed out from smoke inhalation or were already dead.
She had left her children sleeping as she visited her Pendla Street neighbour in New Brighton early on Monday morning, but less than an hour later she had lost her children and their only home, a rented two-room shack in someone’s backyard.
At about 7am, Bulelwa Salaze, 40, heard the screams of a teenage boy from the neighbourhood who told her the shack in which she had left Thulani, five, Likuwe, three, and Lanele, 11 months, was on fire and no-one had seen them run out.
The boy’s screams also woke up neighbours, who rushed to the scene with buckets of water and fought a losing battle against the blaze which gutted two shacks and a vehicle parked on the property.
By the time the fire was completely extinguished by firefighters, the flames had extended to the roof of a third shack nearby.
Fortunately, no-one else was injured.
Thulani, Likuwe and Lanele’s family last heard their voices and saw their cheerful little faces on Sunday evening before they went to sleep.
Their eight-year-old sister, Imani, who had been sleeping in the same room, had just left for school at about 7am and their father for work at about 6.15am, when the fire consumed their home on Monday.
Salaze said the boy shouted that there was a fire coming from her shack and she saw the blaze immediately after stepping out her neighbour’s home.
“I immediately rushed closer to the shack,” she said.
“When I reached the door and pushed it open, the flames were covering the doorway and there was just no way for me to enter.
“I could already feel the heat on my face.
“My kids didn’t make a sound the whole time.”
The children’s oldest sister, Asanda, 21, said once the flames were put out, Thulani’s body was found with his right arm badly burnt.
Likuwe’s lower body was completely burnt while Lanele seemed untouched by the fire.
Asanda is one of Salaze’s three surviving children, alongside Imani and their 15-year-old brother, Oyama.
The two oldest children stay with family in the same street.
Salaze’s friend, Nelisa Zako, who she had been visiting when the tragedy unfolded, said everything had happened so quickly.
“I woke up early because I had a client who came to have her hair done.
“When I was outside, the street was dead quiet and there wasn’t even any smoke to indicate that there could be a fire,” she said.
“I came back inside to start doing my client’s hair and as I was busy with the first cornrow, this kid came rushing in, saying [Salaze’s] shack is burning.
“I initially dismissed him because I thought there was no way a fire could have started that quickly.
“It all happened so fast, almost as if it exploded, but there was no sound of an explosion.
“I don’t understand how it happened.”
Zako said the children sometimes slept over at her house with Salaze.
The children’s father, Zolani Peter, 45, was called from work to the scene.
Soon after he arrived, he had to be rushed to a doctor to be treated for shock.
“He was so shaken that he could hardly speak,” a neighbour said.
“He just kept calling out the names of the three children over and over.”
Police spokesperson Colonel Priscilla Naidu said the cause of the fire was not yet known and an inquest docket had been opened for investigation.
According to the preliminary police report, Salaze said she had gone to a nearby shop and returned to a burning shack.
Her aunt, Mercy Gqomfa, who lives in the same street, said she last saw the children on Sunday evening.
When they bid their grandmothers, aunt and sister goodbye on Sunday night, nobody expected that it would be their last goodbye.
On Monday morning, neighbours stood in their yards in their pyjamas, clearly still shaken by the tragedy.
Rubble, corrugated iron roof sheeting and burnt planks were all that remained of the burnt shacks.
Ward 17 councillor Ludwe Mnyandu said he had called on the social development department to provide counselling to the family, and the human settlement department to provide a temporary structure.
“I will also write to the office of the mayor to ask for assistance to bury these kids.
“As a councillor, I am urging parents to be careful and not leave kids unattended at home,” Mnyandu said.
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