We should all be on fire red alert

Back in Christchurch after four days covering the Nelson fires, I’m feeling a bit paranoid about the fire danger.

It’s a bit like after the Christchurch earthquakes. For at least a year, I couldn’t go anywhere without thinking about what could hit me from above.

The drive back along the coastal highway highlighted how many parts of the South Island’s east coast have developed that brown tinge that spells trouble.

The colour varies. Around Blenheim the hills have a bleached brown pelt. On Banks Peninsula, where I live and where preChristmas rainfall has turbocharged growth, the browns are deeper. Whatever the colour, the east coast has fried to a crisp.

The tinder-dry conditions should put us all on tenterhooks.

If hot, dry, windy summers are to become more common, we should expect more devastating fires and I’m sure a rethink of how we prevent fires and how they are fought is under way.

Many areas on the outskirts of New Zealand cities like Christchurch and Nelson have a combination of lifestyle blocks, bush, tracts of forestry and farmland. The firefighters’ first priority is to defend structures and they spend a lot of time protecting single dwellings on large blocks of land when they could be dealing with other things.

Maybe it’s time for councils and homeowners to put in place more of their own fire prevention measures, such as fire breaks, water tanks, hoses and pumps. Planners might also have to think about where structures should be sited to make fire-fighting more effective.

We are also going to have to live with the costs of having helicopters, tankers and other gear on standby in case a blaze starts. The importance of hitting a fire with everything you’ve got as soon as possible was illustrated by a fire in Nelson itself last Friday. The blaze, deliberately lit, was encouraged by a stiff wind towards an area with the combustible name of The Wood.

Within minutes, about four or five helicopters, diverted from the forestry fire, were dipping their buckets in the sea and, an hour later, the fire was done for.

I’m no expert but I suspect the Nelson fires will go down as a textbook exercise on how to fight a large forest fire on low, hilly terrain.

The fire ignited on Tuesday afternoon in Pigeon Valley Rd, northwest of Wakefield, near Nelson, and spread rapidly up towards Redwood Park Rd, about 5 kilometres to the north.

By Friday the shape of the fire, as drawn on a map, resembled a genie emerging from a bottle with arms folded. The genie covered 2300ha and his outline extended to 25 kilometres.

To the west was a lot more forest and around the north, east and south edges were many pricey houses and other structures. A little further to the south was the town of Wakefield. The fire would have to jump the Wai-iti River and race through some farmland to get to it but the risk was decidedly there.

The first amazing feat pulled off by the firefighters, by which I mean all those on the ground, in the air and back in the command centre, was saving houses and structures on the ridges leading up from the valley floors.

Only one dwelling was lost and aerial shots, showing the houses amidst the black, show it could easily have been a lot more.

After the first day, attention turned to containment lines that, over the next couple of days, were reinforced with 30-metre-wide fire breaks sculpted by huge bulldozers, and other breaks made up of fireretardant chemicals, dropped by top-dressing planes. The ag-pilots get less attention than the helicopter pilots but are just as important.

With the lines in place some back-burning could start to remove the risk of trees and undergrowth flaring and starting more fires.

The new Fire and Emergency New Zealand organisation, formed only in 2017 to streamline rural and urban fire capabilities, appears to have had an excellent disaster.

Reviews may tell a different story but it had plenty of resources at its disposal, it seemed superbly organised and it kept the public constantly up to date. The main complaint was from farmers, who felt they were just as capable of looking after their stock as flown-in government officials, and that will need looking at.

In retrospect some evacuations may have seemed over the top but with a fire, anything can happen and rapid evacuations have to be avoided.

No-one wanted to say it but when I flew over the fire area with aerial attack supervisor Paul Devlin and pilot Rob Hunt on Sunday afternoon, the fire looked pretty much beaten.

A big worry for firefighters was a possible gale on Sunday but this didn’t eventuate and all the containment lines held.

Some things worked in the firefighters’ favour. The fire was close (but not too close) to a city with a good airport and solid engineering capabilities. Housing emergency staff was difficult but manageable.

The winds could have been much worse and the temperatures stayed reasonable.

We have reason, then, to think we are in good hands, but the red alert should continue. The blackened remnants of pine trees can still be seen on the Port Hills above Christchurch two years after the fires of 2017. A repeat is unthinkable.

The tinder-dry conditions should put us all on tenterhooks. If hot, dry, windy summers are to become more common, we should expect more devastating fires.