WATCH | ‘We weren’t allowed to see her’: Distraught families identify Usindiso fire victims
When Elisha Phafoli got a suspicious response to a call he made to his younger sister on Thursday, he knew something was wrong and, along with another sister, made the nearly-400km drive to Johannesburg to get to the bottom of the matter.
Little did he know that his journey would end at the Diepkloof forensic pathology services (FPS) where they would have to identify his sister, Tlalane Buthelezi, and her young daughter’s charred remains through DNA testing.
The two were among 74 people who died after the hijacked Usiindiso building in the Johannesburg CBD went up in flames on Thursday, in what President Cyril Ramaphosa described as a “tragic disaster”.
Sixty-one people were injured in the tragedy.
The Marshalltown building, on the corner of Albert and Delvers streets, was gutted in the early hours on Thursday, claiming the lives of 40 males, 24 females and 12 children.
Families flocked to the Hillbrow and Diepkloof FPS on Friday morning to identify their loved ones, most of whom were burnt beyond recognition.
On arrival in Joburg, they were told his sister and her young daughter Banele had died. They went to various hospitals in search of the duo and ended up at the morgue in Soweto.
“We are here to identify our sister and her daughter who we suspect died in the Usindiso building fire. We’re here because we’ve been to all the hospitals to look for them but couldn’t find them,” he said.
He explained that on arrival, they were shown several pictures of those who were recognisable but none of them featured his sister. He said those pictured were either easily identifiable or slightly burnt.
The next step for them was the collection of DNA samples from his other sister to see if it matched any of the victims.
A pained Phafoli described the situation inside the mortuary as bad, “especially since we don’t know what’s happening”.
“As a family, we are in pain and we can’t even find closure because we can’t even see them for the last time,” he said.
Asked if he knew why his sister, was staying in the condemned building, Phafoli said: “To be honest with you, I don’t know. I suspect it has something to do with her struggle to find work. She was doing odd jobs.”
While Phafoli and his family are in for an agonising and long wait, Busine Mhlebi’s journey ended in devastation with her identifying her 16-year-old daughter Melita as one of the victims.
Mhlebi, her partner and their two-year-old daughter managed to get out of the blazing building by jumping out of the fourth floor and they assumed Melita was right behind them.
She wasn’t.
Mhlebi managed to identify her through pictures shown to her on a laptop.
“We weren’t allowed to see her because she was not in a good state. So we identified her on the laptop and it was her indeed,” a family member confirmed.
So distraught was Mhlebi by news of her daughter’s death, the slightly injured mother had to be given medication to calm her down.
The Gauteng department of health confirmed that of the 74 victims, only 12 were recognisable and the rest could only be identified via DNA testing.
This process will be handled by the police through their victim identification centre once the samples are collected. They would also handle the costs associated with the exercise.
Acting CEO for Gauteng’s forensic pathology services Thembalethu Mpahlaza said they expected results “no later than next week”.
“It will depend on how speedily the laboratory team can process those samples. But fortunately, we were informed at a national level meeting in Durban last week … that they don’t have any DNA backlogs in their labs,” he said.
Asked about the department’s capacity to deal with the “unprecedented” situation of taking in that many bodies at one time, Mpahlaza confirmed the department had procured additional storage fridges to help deal with influxes of this nature.
Gauteng health spokesperson Motaletale Modiba also explained what would happen to bodies that remained unidentified beyond a certain “allowable” period by law.
“That process, if it passes and no one comes forth, legally we are within our rights to engage with the city so that we apply for them to carry forward what is called the pauper’s burial. That process is done by the city and not by the department,” he said.
Home affairs would also be on hand to assist with issuing necessary documents to families.
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