Photographer Shelley Kjonstad found our pictures of old and new Durban this week while on another job to chat to fire fighters about their role as first responders to many crashes in and around Durban during the holiday season.
While there she spotted the old photo on the wall of the Mansfield Road fire station and the local firefighters were more than happy to bring a modern fire truck around to replicate the picture.
It is not certain when the old picture was shot, however the fire engine in question, a Steyr Bronto Skylift 30 metre-2T truck, was first manufactured in Austria in 1991, so it’s relatively recent.
Durban’s long history of firefighting units began in 1870 when William Palmer, a banker and agent for the Royal Insurance Company in Natal, donated a fire engine to the town on condition it gave priority to the buildings insured by his company.
Members of the Durban Volunteer Artillery Corps manned the machine and, in 1877, fire hydrants were erected.
Later, the Borough Police (now metro police) were given responsibility for fire fighting.
A volunteer unit was formed by a group of railway employees and another by a group of harbour employees.
A Mr Morgan of the Johannesburg Fire Brigade was appointed Captain of the Corporation’s brigade in 1898 which consisted of one regular fireman and 10 police firemen who were stationed at the main police station in Pine Street.
TW Lambeth succeeded Morgan in 1902 and work began that year on a fire station in Pine Street, which cost £14 438, and was described as “the most imposing on the sub-continent”.
The corporation’s brigade absorbed the others in 1902 and, by 1904, Durban had 26 full-time firemen and 20 auxiliaries.
The first petrol-driven fire engine was delivered to the brigade in 1911 although horse-drawn ones served until 1919.
In more recent times, in 2005 the eThekwini Fire Brigade was called out a total of 8 672 times.
Today it has 19 fire stations, and a fleet of some 200 vehicles including 30 fire engines, seven water carriers, four aerial platforms, a foam tender, two breathing apparatus tenders, a salvage and lighting unit, a chemical incident unit, a rescue tender and an incident command unit.
It consists of around 455 fire fighters with at least 30 women.
Thomas Bolton, in Facts about Durban, reminisces about the station.
“I am an old boy of Mansfield High School. I left there in 1974 to join the Fire Department, after sitting on the bank steps every lunch break, and watching these men practising climbing up the old Metz Turntable ladder, which incidentally, I ended up driving after being with them a few years.”
The Independent on Saturday