Rebuilt quake home razed by fire
Vilma Flanagan hasn’t been to see the remains of her beautiful house since it was destroyed by last month’s Port Hills fires.
‘‘I’ll drive up there when I’m feeling a bit braver,’’ she said from the caravan she and husband Warren bought after the fires. It is parked at the back of their son’s house in Halswell.
The couple, aged in their 70s, had lived on 30 hectares in Early Valley Rd for 44 years when they lost everything on the third day of the blazes that destroyed 10 other homes, 1850 hectares of land and sparked the evacuation of another 400 houses.
Their new house, which replaced a home damaged in Canterbury’s earthquakes, took 12 months to build after five years of negotiation with their insurer. The fires reduced it to a pile of melted glass and twisted metal.
‘‘We had done the hard yards,’’ Vilma Flanagan said. ‘‘The builder had only just stopped coming. The architect had organised a photographer to take some pictures of the house on the Tuesday of the fires.’’
The Flanagans are still coming to grips with their latest blow.
‘‘I think the shock has set in now,’’ Warren Flanagan said. ‘‘There’s been no tears or anything like that, but we’re just dumbfounded.’’
In a cruel twist of fate, the fire that started on their road on Monday February 13 returned to their side of the Lansdowne Valley two days later, having worked its way along the farm’s neat shelter belts to the house and farm buildings. They also lost barns, a large implement shed and workshop.
‘‘I’m not sure we have the stamina to rebuild the house and the farm,’’ Warren Flanagan said.
The Flanagans evacuated their property, which they kept clean of gorse and scrub, on the Monday when the fire swept up the south side of their road to claim two houses. They watched in horror from their gate as the fire escalated. The next day, Warren Flanagan was escorted to the farm to feed their 300 sheep and late on Wednesday the fire razed their property.
The couple are well insured and do not ask for help or sympathy.
They do, however, want answers as to why their house was not better protected from the fires and why they were not told their house had burned down. No-one has been to see to them to explain what happened.
They wonder if a fire break or the spraying of fire retardant might have made a difference.
Vilma Flanagan said she tried to find out about the house on the Thursday morning, but Civil Defence appeared to be in chaos with nobody prepared to answer her questions.
‘‘They offered me a cup of tea and bun. I just wanted answers,’’ Vilma Flanagan said.
The Flanagans, like others in Early Valley Rd, also want to know how the fire started.
Fellow road resident Chris Bayley said the fire started under a power pole on his property and about three or four residents heard a long bang before the blaze was called in.
Bayley said he believed the power lines shorted, perhaps because the wires were blown together by the wind and a fuse link blew out.
‘‘These high-voltage fuse links, they are just fibreglass tubes with a bit of wire running through them. They are designed in a way that it drops white hot metal in dry grass,’’ he said.
A fire, also believed to be caused by a fuse link blowing, had broken out in the same place 30 years ago, he said. Locals had extinguished the blaze.
He had spoken to fire investigators acting both for Orion and insurance companies and said it was clear insurance companies were looking to blame Orion.
An Orion spokeswoman said it would not be appropriate for the lines company to comment as several investigations were continuing.
The Selwyn District Council said information was being collated for the various investigations and operational review and was not yet available.
A Fire Service report on the cause of the fires is being prepared.
"There's been no tears or anything like that, but we're just dumbfounded." Warren Flanagan, Port Hills fire victim