'Help! Just help us!'

2008-05-14 23:03

Tharine Geldenhuys

Kroonstad - "Help! We're here. Just help us! Gina, where are you? Can't you see us?"

These were the last words that Joey Koekemoer, 51, shouted to her neighbour, Gina Kent, from the flaming hell which her home had become on the Kraalkop plots outside Kroonstad.

Then it was still.

Koekemoer, 49-year-old Sarel de Winnaar, with whom she lived, and a 36-year-old truck driver were trapped in the burning house and all burnt to death.

It took the fire brigade several hours to remove the corpses from the rubble.

Captain Stephan Thakeng of Northern Free State police said a truck driver had lost control of his vehicle, which apparently had been transporting frozen vegetables, while going around a corner.

The truck went across the double highway and crashed into the couple's home which was a few hundred metres from the highway.

Explosions from fuel, gas

The impact of the crash on the southern side of the house was so great that the northern walls also collapsed.

Explosions went off minutes after the crash, presumably due to fuel tanks, the truck's refrigeration unit and gas bottles in the house.

Kent said she was woken by the crash after 04:00.

"I heard the crash and thought it was just another accident on the N1 highway. It sounded like something rushing and dragging over bumps in the road, as if pieces of metal were being dragged along.

"It was then that I peered outside and realised something was wrong at Joey's house."

"At exactly 04:50 I called the fire brigade and then the police and KSS Security where Joey worked."

The first explosion was at 05:05. Kent said: "It sounded like a shotgun being fired next to your ear."

She tried to push a stick through the window to Koekemoer and De Winnaar in the hope of one of them being able to grab on to it and be pulled out.

Meagre water supply

"Neither the police, the security people nor the firefighters could do anything for them.

"Joey and Sarel begged for help," said a distressed Kent.

The firefighters tried to reduce the raging heat from the burning truck and the house with only a pump and a hose suitable for veld fires, and a meagre water supply from an outside tap.

At the time of publication the truck driver's family had not yet been told of his death.

- Volksblad