The logistical battle:

Swimming pools and delivered cupcakes are two small but nonetheless important parts of a massive effort to put out the bush fire in Nelson.

As a dozen ground crews continued to battle the blaze, as many as 14 choppers were in the air at any one time, helping with the effort.

Fire and Emergency (FENZ) regional manager rural John Sutton said each of those helicopters dump between 30 and 50 monsoon bucket-loads of water over the course of a day.

Each bucket can hold anywhere between 400 to 1000 litres of water.

That means somewhere between 168,000 and 800,000 litres of water was being used to quell the flames each day. That’s an entire olympic swimming pool every 13 days on the lower end, or every three days at the higher end. Sutton said it was fortunate there was a lot of water in the area, and he had even seen a monsoon bucket ‘‘dipping’’ into a local swimming pool to fill up.

Water was just one aspect that needed organisation and resources. There’s also personnel to fight the fire.

Sutton said there were three stages of rural fire – ‘‘initial attack’’, which could be dealt with by a local crew, ‘‘extended attack’’, where neighbouring