Bushfire brings
Those hit hard by fierce blaze say rebuild has been ‘healing time’
It’s crunchy underfoot. It’s like listening to someone eat a bag of chips with their mouth open. Each step, however, is the noise of the remains of native forest which used to envelop Helen Lee’s Whitianga home that was destroyed in a ferocious bush fire 12 months ago.
No lives were lost, but Lee was one of three to become homeless.
She watched from a safe distance with former husband Paul Lee and his partner, Jani Dennis, as the blaze circled then eventually engulfed the house. The trio own the property.
Lee said she was mowing her lawns when her neighbour ran over and told her to get out as there was a “hell fire” on the small peninsula at the end of Comers Rd.
She quickly ran inside and grabbed her flute and cellphone — things she now regrets, instead wishing she’d taken a few prized family possessions instead.
When the Herald visited the site late last year, the signs of both growth and devastation were evident.
The fire moved unpredictably. At one stage flames were raging on the east, when they suddenly moved west.
Lee can still clearly recall the moment her house was taken.
Lee, Paul and Dennis were standing at the cordon and all of a sudden there was a loud “boom”.
“You could see the flames on the hill and then there was this humongous explosion and I thought, ‘ that’s it, that’s my house’,” Lee said.
“The tears just flowed but I felt like I was being held, I felt like I was being looked after and I had an incredible sense that everything was going to be all right. It was quite overwhelming.”
A Fire Service investigation couldn’t pinpoint one specific cause, instead narrowing it down to either a deliberate burn or a spark from a digger exhaust igniting dry grass.
Coromandel police determined the more likely cause being from the digger.
Either way, the trio don’t hold any grudge or care about why it started, it was now about moving on and doing their best to protect their properties in the future.
“It was tinder dry,” Dennis said.
“Any spark could have started it. Even by the time
HFor a video report on this story see nzherald.co.nz they found it, it could have been right through the bush anyway. That’s why it got so big, they [Fire Service] thought ‘oh we can contain this’ but then suddenly realised they couldn’t contain it.
“More firemen came and