Forced out twice in two years
A tornado, ice storms, storm surge; Norm and Christie McCarren are no stranger to natural disasters.
Now they can add wildfires to the list.
The couple have been forced out of their home by the wildfire that has burnt through nearly 2000 hectares of forest near Nelson, almost a year to the day since they fled their rental home when it was flooded by the sea a few kilometres away.
The pair, originally from the United States, started packing up their car at their rental home in Redwood Valley on Tuesday night about half an hour before the police knocked on their door, telling them to leave.
‘‘We live kind of simple so it was easy for us to pack up our van, and just go,’’ Norm said.
The couple were driving back from Rabbit Island on Tuesday when they first realised a fire had broken out.
‘‘We thought, oh that [smoke] looks like it’s over by the paper mill,’’ Christie said.
‘‘And then we’ve taken the turns to our property and we [said], oh now it looks like it’s much closer, and then we got there and it was in our backyard almost.’’
The fire was ‘‘huge’’ with smoke directly over the house, the couple said.
They returned to their cottage yesterday, and threw water on hotspots. The fire had come within two or three metres of their neighbour’s workshop further up the hill, but the treeline and the brush under the trees hadn’t burnt, Norm said
‘‘It jumped over the trees and came back down into our paddock, and then burned the paddock.
‘‘It must have been moving really fast.’’
In the meantime they were staying with friends in Aniseed Valley.
Last year, they were renting a flat in Mapua, three houses down from the wharf, when ex-cyclone Fehi hit on February 1.
‘‘We decided to go ahead and pack the van, we moved the van out to the street and it just went from nothing to this deep [he gestured to half way up his thigh] in 15 minutes,’’ Norm said.
‘‘We’re telling friends ... we’ll let you know where we’ll be next February, and you can take a holiday on the other side of the world.’’
The couple have been New Zealand residents since 2006, when they moved here from Atlanta, Georgia.
There, they experienced ice storms, hurricanes and a tornado in 2002.
‘‘We all need to be prepared for more events like this I think,’’ Norm said.
They were building a house out in Ngatimoti, and their experience in Tasman district so far hadn’t put them off their plans.
‘‘This is making us more aware of what we have to do to be prepared,’’ Christy said.
They also hoped to be able to bring back a fire retardant from the US when they visited later this year.
‘‘When a fire is coming you get on top of your house and your spray your house down with it, and it produces a fire retardant barrier on your home,’’ Norm said.