Warning to all you stompie-throwers
High summer temperatures, dry vegetation and strong winds in Cape Town combined with ignorant smokers who throw their stompies out of their car windows can equal life-threatening and nature-tearing fires.
This may not be news to you, you might have heard the ad for the stompie-hotline on the radio, or seen it on social media. In the midst of a disastrous raging fire covering the bigger part of the Southern Peninsula, motorists need to be urged not to throw their cigarette stompies out the window. And, if they don’t want to listen, it’s only fair that they receive the consequences.
“Besides the possible fire risk, it is a pollution hazard,” Schnetler said. People have to be responsible,” said Cape Town’s fire chief, Ian Schnetler.
IOL News reports that the City of Cape Town launched the stompie hotline in 2007 after a devastating fire, allegedly caused by a cigarette butt thrown out of a car window by a tourist, burnt parts of Table Mountain and killed a British tourist.
Warning letters are sent to the reported stompie-throwers, and if the case is taken up, the perpetrator can be fined up to R1500.
All calls are followed up on, but callers have to be willing to sign an affidavit with the police about the incident. Therefore, there can’t be any anonymous callers.
Jaco Groenewald, head of the stompie call centre, said staff forwarded all the information to the fire department to investigate.
“We take down the details and send the information to the fire department, which investigates the complaint,” said Groenewald.
“Before people call, they must have all the details… We need the vehicle’s registration number and exactly where the incident occurred.”
The city amended its fire safety by-law in June 2007 to make it easier to fine people who throw burning butts out of car windows.
The owner of the car will be held responsible for any “throwing, putting down or dropping of a burning match, cigarette, or other burning material or any material capable of spontaneous combustion or self-ignition in a road or any other place that occurs from a vehicle”.
The stompie hotline number is 021 424 7715.
(Image source: Life Is Savage)