(Bloomberg) — Runaway mountainside fires raged across Cape Town's southern peninsula in South Africa for a third day on Tuesday and officials warned they could take several days to extinguish.

While mountain slopes above the suburbs of Noordhoek, Hout Bay and Tokai are ablaze, there is currently no threat to lives or property, the City of Cape Town said in a statement on its website. On Monday, five homes in the Noordhoek area were razed and the luxury Tintswalo lodge at the foot of the picturesque Chapman's Peak Drive was partially destroyed.

"At this stage it looks like this is a fire that will continue burning for most of this week," Linton Rensburg, a spokesman for Working on Fire, the national fire management agency, said by phone. Four helicopters and two fixed-wing aircraft were being used to drop water on the flames, he said.

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