Santam continues to power municipalities through its P4RR initiative

Santam continues to collaborate with several municipalities across the country through its flagship programme, Partnership for Risk and Resilience (P4RR), whose aim is to build societal resilience to primary hazards facing South Africa i.e., fires, floods and drought through cross-sectoral partnerships and collaboration.

Since its establishment in 2012, P4RR has supported 82 municipalities across the country through various interventions such as institutional capacity development, provision of equipment and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), education and training, risk assessments, early warnings, climate change adaptation, water security initiatives, to name but a few.

Santam does recognise that the adequate and reliable supplies of water is critical for the effective protection of assets from fire risks. Against this background, the company has initiated several mitigative actions with its municipal partners to enhance availability of water for fire protection and to support and enhance protection of fire hydrants from vandalism and unauthorised utilisation.

The Nelson Mandela Bay Metro has been facing a severe water supply crisis which not only has potential to undermine quality of life and social cohesion but also poses a major threat to fire protection in the region. In view of this, during 2022, Santam collaborated with the Metro to implement measures to augment water supply for firefighting by installing 18 five-thousand litres tanks and pumps in all nine (9) fire stations (equivalent to 10 000 litres per station) across the city.

The Metro has already utilised this capability during some of the major fires that occurred recently in the city in a manner that enhances fire protection and reduction of losses. Similar interventions were implemented in six fire stations within the Sarah Baartman District which has experienced similar water supply challenges like the Nelson Mandela Metro.

Additionally, Santam also provided firefighting foam concentrate – 20 foam containers (25l) per station totaling 180 containers to optimise water usage during firefighting efforts and augmented water supply for fire protection by installing tanks and pumps in 14 selected Old-age homes.

This included facilities for people with special needs located in water scarcity red-zones to reduce vulnerability of facilities & residents to fires.

Santam also collaborated with the City of Tshwane to lock fire hydrants to assist in preventing misuse and abuse of fire hydrants in the city. The City’s Fire Services received 1100 hydrant locks (see image below) and 45 restricting tools / keys for use to unlock the hydrants during routine maintenance or in emergency situations. 

Santam also collaborated with the West Coast District Municipality to enhance water supply for veldfire response by installing four 40 000 litres steel water tanks and providing eight 1000 litres mobile water tanks/trailers in selected areas of the District.

This capability is utilised by firefighting agencies during veldfire response operations as shown in Figure 3 below:

The feedback received from the partner organisations is that these interventions has significantly enhanced existing capabilities to manage fire risks and response efforts during emergencies.  

The image below shows an aerial firefighting resource acccesing water from a 40 000L Santam sponsored Steel Water Tank in West Coast District.

*Article written by Dr. Moses Khangale, Manager: Stakeholder Programmes, Santam Insurance.