Community resilience and adaptation to fire: the case of Palmiet informal settlement, Ethekwini minicipality, South Africa

Abstract

Informal settlements within the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipal area are continuously increasing in size and numbers and, more than 238 households were living in informal settlements by 2018. The municipality is one of the top 16  municipalities in South Africa with the highest number of households living in informal dwellings. With the increasing mushrooming of informal dwellings in and around the city center of Durban and nearby industrial areas, shack fires have become a common occurrence. This has prompted the metropolitan to conduct a trend analysis of these shack fires. The trend analysis indicated that some informal settlements more frequently experience fires than others regardless of similar
dynamics, such as lack of basic services such as electricity. Palmiet informal settlement is one such that does not experience many fires. Based on this trend, the study sought to investigate the factors that lead to adaptation to and resilience of the community to shack fires. The community livelihood framework formed the theoretical basis of the study that was predominately qualitative and to a lesser extent quantitative. The research sampling was a homogenous purposive sampling based on location, knowledge, and experiences. Sixty-five respondents from the L-Section of Palmiet and three municipal officials participated in the study. Strong community social networks that led to the adoption of internal fire risk reduction
measures, the collective approach the community adopted of “coming back stronger and better positioned for the future” resulted in creating a resilient community of Palmiet. Getting back to the baseline is not enough in tackling informal settlement fires, but resilience could be enhanced through the bouncing forward factor. One of the recommendations is that the municipality needs to strengthen its collaboration with the local communities to improve community fire risk reduction measures.