Garage blaze helps to keep firefighters busy
A garage fire on High St in Motueka was one of four callouts in a busy 10-hour run for the region’s volunteer fire crews.
Motueka fire chief Mike Riddell said the garage fire was ‘‘well involved internally’’ when crews arrived shortly after the 12.23am callout yesterday. ‘‘Flames were coming out around the roof.’’
The door was closed, however, so the fire was contained and did not spread to a nearby house.
Firefighters in breathing apparatus were able to quickly extinguish the blaze. ‘‘The structure’s not too bad, but it’s gutted inside,’’ Riddell said.
A fire investigator was due to examine the scene to try to determine the cause of the blaze.
Riddell said he returned home and had fallen asleep about 3.30am, only to be called out again just half an hour later, to a trailer fire on Moffatt St in Motueka.
The fire was being treated as suspicious, and police were notified. A police spokeswoman confirmed that they were making inquiries.
Motueka firefighters had just made it home again when another callout came just after 5.15am, to an alarm activation. They discovered that it was a false alarm.
The run of jobs started just before 7pm on Thursday, when Motueka firefighters were called to reports of a spill on State Highway 60 at Riwaka, near the turnoff to Kaiteriteri. Initially, they thought they were attending a diesel or oil spill, but discovered on arrival that it was cream.
Riddell, who has been a firefighter for almost 39 years – all but six months of them with the Motueka Volunteer Fire Brigade – said there had been 69 callouts so far this year.
‘‘Last year started off a bit the same. We’re a reasonably busy brigade.’’
Often, there was a ‘‘slow patch’’ coming into winter he said. The brigade generally attended about 250 incidents a year.
Meanwhile, the crew of the Nelson Marlborough Rescue Helicopter responded to three callouts on Thursday – winching aboard an injured tramper, and making two medical transfers.
Flight medic Rob Clark said the crew winched the injured tramper aboard the helicopter from the Leslie–Karamea Track in Kahurangi National Park shortly after a callout at noon. The woman, who had fallen and injured an ankle, was in rugged bush on steep terrain. She was flown to Nelson Hospital.
The woman was a member of a group of about 16 people, one of whom was tramping in a tutu, Clark said.
Earlier, about 8.50am, a patient was flown from Wairau Hospital in Blenheim to Nelson Hospital in a medical transfer. The chopper was back in the air about 6.30pm to transfer a patient from Murchison to Nelson Hospital.