A Soweto family lost their recently renovated house while waiting for one of five City of Johannesburg's fire engines to extinguish a fire in one of the bedrooms.

The family has blamed the dire shortage of fire engines for losing their newly renovated home which it had put on the market.

Joburg mayor Geoff Makhubo recently announced that the metro has only five fire engines to service its five million residents.

Makhubo said the city was faced with the shortages despite the previous administration having paid a service provider R172m upfront to deliver more fire engines.

The newly renovated house in Snake Park, which the family claimed it had put on the market for R1m, was gutted by fire as the fire department took all two hours to arrive. The delay was apparently caused by the fire department's struggle to have enough water for the emergency.

Rose Soares, 55, watched helplessly as a house that she and her husband built from scratch went up in flames on Tuesday night.

The fire was apparently caused by an electrical fault.

"I blame the fire department because had they arrived on time only one room could have burnt, now I've lost everything."

Soares said she called the emergency services around 12am after realising that a fire had broken out in one of the bedrooms in the house.

"I quickly jumped out of bed [and] called the fire department as soon as I realised that the room had caught fire. The first person who answered my call said the fire engine would arrive in 20 minutes," she said.

"We continued to make efforts to put out the fire to no avail."

Soares said even after arriving two hours later, the fire people were not ready to tackle the fire from the onset.

"We had to wait for some of them to wear their protective clothes while the house caught more fire and they then realised the engine had no water," she recalled.

Soares said the fire personnel tried using buckets with water from the tap but the flames got worse due to a strong wind.

"I watched my home burn down and a part of me died as I cried and have not been able to sleep since that night because I know that had they arrived on time I would still be in my beautiful home," she said.

Robert Mulaudzi, spokesperson for the City of Johannesburg Emergency Management, told Sowetan that there was no fire engine designated to service Soweto specifically.

"Yes, we do have a shortage of fire engines in the city, however the issue of the shortage of vehicles is being addressed at the highest level," he said.

Mulaudzi said the fire engine that was dispatched had been from Eldorado Park and was also meant to service another district.