Fire at South African parliament – level 3

Fire at South African parliament

07-01-2022 15:00

On Sunday, a fire in the South African parliament in Cape Town, caused extensive damage to the buildings, with a roof collapsing and an entire floor gutted.

Firefighters attacked the blaze for several hours, and by mid-morning, the smoke started to fade. President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the parliament’s work would continue and that one person was being questioned about the fire.
The parliamentary area, some of which dates back to 1884, has a cluster of buildings, and the fire’s cause wasn’t immediately known. The building’s fire alarm only rang when firefighters were already there.

The disaster came only one day after the late archbishop Desmond Tutu’s funeral at St. George’s Cathedral, close to where the fire happened.

Difficult words: gutted (badly damaged or completely destroyed), cluster (a group of similar things occuring closely together).

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