Weary fire-fighters who have been battling a runaway veld fire on the Garden Route for the past 16 days are praying for rain.
At least 50mm will be required to completely douse the now numerous smouldering hotspots around the Garden Route National Park.
The Park's Planning Manager, Len Du Plessis, said there was no active fire line anymore but "there are a lot of hotspots to attend to."
He said mopping up is very difficult due to the inaccessible terrain.
"We did a counter-burn on Thursday (last week) and this was successful in protecting some of the plantations. There is no active fire line at present but it's still smouldering, there's numerous hotspots that we need to attend to," said Du Plessis.
"We are actually using more personnel during the mopping up phase than we did during the suppression phase of the fire. So, it's going to take us at least 50mm of rain before the mopping up can cease. We are sending in personnel by foot into the burnout area, attending to all the smouldering logs and stumps because all we need is just one ember to be picked up again and then we'll have all the fun from the start," he added.
Du Plessis said that the "old rule of thumb" is that 50mm of rain will be needed before they can leave a fire, but with no rain predicted soon he said they would probably be mopping up for another two weeks.
"We've got more than 100 people a day on the fire line. We've got teams (Working On Fire) from as far afield as Thaba Nchu, Bloemfontein, Kroonstad and other teams from the Free State, even teams from Pietermaritzburg assisting us with the mopping up operations," he said.
Du Plessis said the Working On Fire Teams were dispatched through the Southern Cape Fire Protection Association.
