Beggars and ghosts light up arson probe

Brian Hayward WEEKEND POST REPORTER haywardb@avusa.co.za

WHILE talk of the bizarre blaze that razed a Port Elizabeth video store earlier this week has been hot gossip, investigators believe they are a step closer to cracking the source of the suspected arson attack.

Ever since fire gutted Central‘s popular Video Tavern in Westbourne Road on Tuesday morning, scores of curious onlookers and disappointed customers have gathered outside in an attempt to find answers.

Rumours have abounded that it was the result of a malicious turf war between city video store owners, while others believed an angry client used the return slot to deposit a lit ignition substance which fast razed the entire store.

The blaze also brought back memories of a series of more than 70 bizarre, unexplained fires which eventually gutted a Buckingham Road house less than 500 metres up the road from Video Tavern in 2001.

At the time, an independent fire consultant and electrical engineer, commissioned by the owner‘s insurance company, ruled out arson and said the spontaneous fires were suspected to be the result of “poltergeist activity”.

A former deputy director of the fire department also attributed the fires to “paranormal activity”.

Miraculously, the businesses adjacent to Video Tavern as well as the flats above the store only suffered from smoke damage and were untouched by any flames, thanks to quick work by the fire department.

“We heard glass breaking and saw smoke at about 5.30am (on Tuesday), so we all gathered together and ran across the road in our jammies (pyjamas). I was so scared our homes would also catch alight,” said Hettie Collins, who has lived above the store for 35 years.

A few days earlier, beggars along the street had had an altercation with a security guard at the store, she said. They had apparently promised to return and burn it down. According to a safety marshal at the fire department, Andries Moolman, there was an absence of any “accelerant smell” at the scene, but he said this could be attributed to the volume of water which firefighters had been forced to use.

“We saw something which led us to believe (the fire) was started through the returns slot,” he said. “The front section had fire damage and the rest of the store was damaged by the heat of the fire and the smoke.”

Moolman said he would only be able to make his decision once he had viewed the security tapes which owner Grant van den Berg had retrieved earlier this week.

Van den Berg, who started up the store 15 years ago, denied there was any rivalry between various video rental outlets

“There seems to be no sign of accelerants and the fire only burnt in a four-metre radius from the (returns bin at the) door.”

According to Van den Berg, the security tapes showed a fire starting in the returns bin at about 4.20am, almost an hour before the blaze alerted the store‘s security company, Atlas, which in turn called the fire brigade.

“The fire could have developed slowly from something like a cigarette butt, which might explain why there was so much heat,” added Van den Berg.

His mother, Nola, owner of the Kabega Park Video Tavern for the past 28 years, said the shock of the sudden loss of her son‘s store was still sinking in.

“It‘s terrible, because it‘s not just about the monetary loss. He‘s also lost all those old videos and Beta (format) tapes as well as precious collections,” she said.

Van den Berg said he hoped to have the store back up and running come mid-December. In the meantime, customers would be able to have their contracts honoured by her outlet across town, his mother added.

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