Family, neighbour speak following Durban fire tragedies

In Wyebank, west of Durban six-year-old twins Snegugu and Snehlanhla Mtolo and their two-year-old sister Esihle were locked inside their shack and left alone when the fire broke out in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Their grandfather, Simon Mtolo who lives nearby says he didn't even have water to help put out the fire.

He says he's angry with his daughter for leaving the girls by themselves.

"My daughter came and asked me: "Father, where are my children?" She was screaming at this time. I said, don't ask me, I don't know because I was angry at the time. When I asked her, she said she was somewhere there on the road, I don't know what she was doing there," he said.

KwaZulu-Natal police have opened a case of child negligence against the children's mother.

In the second incident in Phoenix, north of Durban - a tenant at a block of flats where two little girls burned to death says their parents are distraught.

Tom Nobert says the girls' father left them sleeping in their flat following an argument with his wife - who had apparently walked out earlier.

Sisters, five-year-old Sju and eight-month-old Nikita Lembethe died after a candle fell over and set their home on fire.

Nobert says when the couple returned they were inconsolable.

"She [children's mother] came from [upstairs] crying. Someone told them the children have been burnt inside the house. When she came she didn't see the husband, she said [she] left [her] husband inside with the children," he said.