In the line of fire
Six months ago the Pigeon Valley fire disrupted the lives of thousands of residents in Wakefield and small communities nearby. But it also brought them together, as Laurel Ketel reports.
Leanne Hough and Tony Flemming’s hopes of saving their home from the Pigeon Valley wildfire faded with the daylight.
Evacuated from their Teapot Valley property, they could only watch as the helicopters that had held the flames at bay had to stop as night closed in.
‘‘I had a feeling that could be it. That is when I thought we were probably going to lose the house. It was hard watching them leave,’’ Hough recalls.
The difficult scene played out on the third day of the massive Pigeon Valley fire, which had initially swept past Hough and Flemming’s ridgeline home on February 5. But on Thursday, February 7, it came roaring back.
Hough, a deputy principal at Wakefield School, says the school had been under a pall of smoke, and she called Tony to make a plan for after work. Flemming left his job early and,
with the help of friends and neighbours, cleared as much vegetation as he could from around the house.
‘‘We cut down all the large trees in the garden, and clear-felled everything around the house,’’ he says.
They removed 12 trailer loads of garden material, and tried clearing the firebreak around their property of long grass and wilding pines. ‘‘We just kept working until the police came up and told us it was time to go.’’
The couple then headed to a vineyard in Brightwater – Flemming’s two young children had left earlier – and watched as helicopters repeatedly doused their house and land with water. ‘‘We watched the flames rapidly get closer and closer to the house. The helicopters were working so hard in their last half-hour of flying time,’’ Hough says.
‘‘We were watching the ridge and hoping that the flames we could see were on the side furthest from the house.’’
But just as their hearts sank because the helicopters had to leave, they saw white lights tracking through the pines at their property, and realised that ground crews were arriving.
It was a powerful moment they still find emotional to talk about.
‘‘It was an unbelievable feeling to think that somebody was putting themselves between our house and the fire – for the sake of us and our neighbours,’’ Hough says.
Fire appliances, water tankers and firefighters with hoses converged on the ridgeline, and heavy machinery rolled in.
‘‘We could see huge machinery heading up our drive to start work on the containment lines. The eastern side was still very much alight.
‘‘The first bulldozer in had flames licking at its tracks. Machinery was being hosed down by water tankers, they were at such risk.’’
Among them were drivers from Brightwater-based Taylors Contracting. Operations executive Matt Taylor says they got to the house at 11.30pm to find it ringed by firefighters in ‘‘smoke so thick they could hardly breathe’’.
A bulldozer arrived at midnight, and worked through the night to put a firebreak down the side of the house. The 300 gum trees planted by the couple as a windbreak were removed and thrown over the edge of the ridgeline.
The next morning, after spending the night at a friend’s house, Flemming and Hough were overwhelmed to see their house still standing.
When the couple were allowed back for two hours on the following Sunday, they were able to meet some of the crews at their property.
‘‘Seeing the containment lines being put in was the most beautiful sight, and it was nice to meet those up here doing the hard yards,’’ Hough says.
In total, the couple and Flemming’s two young children spent 14 days away from their property. They were overwhelmed by the generosity and support they received.
Hough says they have taken many positives from the ordeal.
‘‘It really brought our valley together. We were able to connect with neighbours we hadn’t seen in a while and all work together when we could get back in for short periods, making sure all animals were fed and their homes were OK.’’
Flemming says the fire also gave them a lot to think about for any future emergencies.
‘‘We need to address our boundaries and our escape plans – this could all happen again.’’
They lost 1.2 hectares of grazing to containment lines, new fencing is needed, and the clear-felled garden will have to be replanted, but the couple are just grateful to still have their home.
‘‘It is incredible what everyone did – we appreciate it so much. We still have our home, our neighbours still have theirs, and it is because of the sheer amount of hours and manpower that was put into this.’’
Among them were firefighters, helicopter pilots, police and contractors, many of whom lived in the area they were defending, making it a personal as well as a professional challenge.
The Defenders
That Thursday, the threat was palpable in Wakefield, the historic township with about 3000 inhabitants.
By the afternoon, the village was covered in thick smoke, blocking the sun.
Wakefield’s Constable Jamie White says there were a lot of ‘‘very stressed residents’’ that day as chunks of ash and burnt pine needles rained down on the village and surrounding valleys.
‘‘It was very eerie being in here on Thursday night with the orange haze.
‘‘It was scary seeing the fire coming over the top of the hill in Spring Grove. It only took 20 minutes to burn halfway down the hill.’’
On Friday, the call to evacuate Wakefield was made. White says a lot of people were questioning it ‘‘but they weren’t up there, they couldn’t see the flames and the speed the fire was travelling’’.
He has a lot of respect for how residents handled the evacuation, though.
‘‘I think the locals’ patience and resilience has to be commended.
‘‘It must have been hard. They are used to having two policemen in the village and suddenly there are 60, along with the army and the air force, and everyone is telling them to leave.’’
White says the emergency brought local people closer together.
‘‘Everyone was looking out for each other, and the generosity from people has been amazing – it blew me away.’’
One of the challenging situations for valley residents was the fate of their animals, as cordons prevented access to their properties – ‘‘not knowing what state their animals were in, if they were still in their paddocks, if they had access to water’’.
White understood their frustration – he grew up in a rural background, and knew why people were concerned about their animals, particularly as they had already been affected by the long summer drought.
White led an emergency operation to take animal feed to affected farms,
part of his 16-hour shifts in those first five days. But he deflects praise from his community, saying he came into the job to help people.
‘‘Sometimes it is just the small things, like not being afraid to give someone a hug when they are crying – that might be all they need. To just listen and hear their frustrations.’’
He and his siblings lost a pine plantation on their family’s Pigeon Valley farm, but he says the lesson was ‘‘you can always replace trees’’.
‘‘I’ve learnt during this what is most important and what really counts – that is people.’’
The chief of Wakefield’s volunteer fire brigade, Fritz Buckendahl, also has no doubt that evacuating the village was the right decision. ‘‘You don’t want a fire up your arse and a fire in front of you – the village would have been in the middle.’’
When the fire began, 17 of the brigade’s 22 volunteers turned up, and they were the first on the scene at Pigeon Valley. The ferocity of the blaze meant they could not attack it directly, so they joined the efforts to protect homes on the flanks.
‘‘They didn’t want to stop,’’ Buckendahl recalls. ‘‘I had to make people go home to sleep, but they were all back at the station by 7am. There was a real sense of responsibility for protecting the village.’’
That became the brigade’s key role for the next few days, and Buckendahl admits that sitting and waiting was difficult for his crew.
‘‘Doing nothing was the hardest part. Strategically, we were here to do a job, but a lot of the crew wanted to be out on the fire lines. But our job was to stay here and protect the village.’’
Wakefield School principal Peter Verstappen says it was surreal watching the pine needles and ash rain down on the school grounds on the Thursday. ‘‘It was very concerning, given how dry everything was – I don’t know how we didn’t have any spot fires.’’
For the experienced principal, it was a third major emergency in the past decade. He was working at Southbridge School in Canterbury during the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.
‘‘I quickly decided that trying to get school restarted elsewhere was very important. My experience from the earthquakes told me that trying to get some sense of normality back for children is important.’’
After Hope Community Church offered to host the school’s 260 pupils, staff were escorted back into the school to grab equipment for their temporary home, which was ready to go the following Monday.
‘‘Children were walking in with looks of anxiety and apprehension on their faces – they had obviously spent the weekend with their lives in turmoil. They didn’t know about their houses, their pets, and they were camping on people’s floors or in motels,’’ Verstappen says. ‘‘It was a huge upheaval.’’
But as they looked around, Verstappen knew he had made the right call.
‘‘They walked in very anxious. Then they would see their friends, their teachers, and they just relaxed – that was a wonderful moment, seeing them relax.’’
Although most of the village was allowed to return home late Monday, the fire situation was changing daily, so the decision was made for the school to stay at the church for the week.
Verstappen says he was touched by the offers of support the school received and the many phone calls from his colleagues throughout the country
‘‘Two schools in Christchurch held a mufti day, raising over $1000 for us. The kindness and generosity has been overwhelming. I’m very proud to be a part of this school and the wider community.’’
The Pilot
For pilot Toby Reid, who is based at Eighty-eight Valley, near Wakefield, the fire quickly turned personal.
‘‘It is emotional. You have got all your friends and family down there and you are thinking, ‘Holy crap, this is in my backyard’.’’
On the first day, he watched from the air as his aunt shifted horses to a safer location.
With firefighting the most demanding flying a pilot can do, Reid had to put his emotions aside and maintain his focus. Pilots need an acute understanding of fire behaviour, and there was little room for error.
Reid has had close calls fighting fires before, and is well aware of the risks.
‘‘You can get trapped in a valley that is unburnt but both sides are burning, and then all of a sudden it can turn into an explosive bomb.’’
The Pigeon Valley blaze was unlike anything he had seen – it was cresting the top of ridges and then spitting embers that would start spot fires up to 500 metres away. ‘‘It was setting new fires across Teapot, Eves and then Redwood valleys.’’
Reid says that after that first gusty day, it was just sheer fortune that the winds calmed down for the next two weeks.
All helicopters had to cease work at sundown, and Reid returned to his base on the hill up Eighty-eight Valley. ‘‘Looking back to Pigeon Valley, I could see the glow.’’
Watching the flame height through the night, he knew the fire was going to be a bad one, and expected to be working on it for a few days. ‘‘We didn’t expect we would be working on it for another three weeks.’’
Reid and wife Rachael – also a pilot – own and operate Reid Helicopters, and had up to four aircraft working on the fire, doing various tasks.
‘‘We were giving situation reports on the fire, controlling other helicopters from an air base, and doing monsoon runs.’’
It was a long few weeks for Reid, who was already pre-booked with tourism and commercial work when the fires started. ‘‘We dropped everything.’’
This was made easier by all their clients being ‘‘very understanding’’, and having friends and family who were evacuees staying at their house, looking after the couple’s two young sons. ‘‘It was really nice coming home at the end of a long day to friends and family. We could pack up the helicopters and then have some social time.’’
Reid says it was great being part of the helicopter team – ‘‘it is a small industry, and we all support each other ’’ – and he is proud of the huge effort everyone put in to keeping the village safe.
‘‘Everyone – Fire & Emergency NZ, the community, contractors, ground crews – they have all done the most amazing job. I don’t think it could have been done better.
‘‘Everyone is affected by it, and everyone pulls together. The support from volunteers, the food and supplies has been overwhelming.’’
The wall in the office at Reid Helicopters is covered in pictures and cards from local children, thanking the team for keeping the village safe.
‘‘Difficult times show how strong small town communities are, especially Wakefield.’’
The Contractors
If the firefighters at the front line were the officers and infantry in the war against the wildfire, contractors formed the heavy brigade. Diggers, excavators and bulldozers from around the region rumbled into the smoky fireground, cutting firebreaks that proved vital in containing the blaze.
It is a competitive industry but Matt Taylor, of Taylors Contracting, says everyone pulled together, working in two shifts around the clock. Taylors’ Brightwater head office hosted a daily briefing by the fire incident controller.
Taylor says the Thursday flareup was the scariest as the fire burned through the back of Teapot Valley, heading towards Wakefield.
Taylors’ forestry division manager, Mike Fahey, says the fire was ‘‘completely out of control’’ that night.
‘‘We were trying to put firebreaks in, and it had jumped by 300m in one place. There was a ridge that hadn’t been touched, and all of a sudden it was burning and the call was made to pull out.’’
It was a tense wait, but finally the wind died late at night and the contractors could get back in.
‘‘We only just cut it off,’’ Taylor says. ‘‘If we had missed it that night, it was on its way to Wakefield. One bulldozer blade width cut it off.’’
Fahey says the drivers were often working in atrocious conditions, with thick smoke reducing visibility during the day and adding to the problems at night. Local knowledge proved crucial in this environment, with several drivers knowing the area well from hunting in the forested valleys.
Driver Ben Bonis, who worked on bulldozers and diggers after the fire broke out, says that at one site the smoke was so thick the crew needed a helicopter to hover overhead, giving them directions by radio.
‘‘Air ops could be called up, and they would get water dropped near the operators during flare-ups. If we got to a place and it was too dangerous, we would pull back and choppers would come in and bomb it. Then we would go back in and keep working.’’
He says battling the massive blaze was a high-stress environment, but the camaraderie with other operators made it bearable. ‘‘Lots of debriefing people jokingly said we sucked all the oxygen out of the fire by all the talking we did.’’
Bonis and Taylor say some of the fire behaviour was remarkable – trees that were crowning in flames ‘‘like a rocket’’; the fire spreading across irrigated paddocks because the roots were so dry.
‘‘You could see it travelling along the ground, and it was incredible to watch,’’ Taylor says.
‘‘A number of very experienced fire people said this is uncharted territory.’’
Although some landowners have been upset about the firebreaks left on their properties, many thanked the contractors for protecting their homes.
The company was also buoyed by people bringing in food, and letters of support.
Taylor says he is proud of the staff’s efforts, particularly because many of them had been evacuated from their homes.
‘‘One worker had worked all day, and was so tired he left the forest at the end of his shift and just drove straight home and went to bed, not realising the village was evacuated. He woke up in the morning and thought, ‘S..., it’s quiet’.
‘‘Everyone did so well.’’