STORIES FROM THE FLAMES
15 minutes to get out
Fay and Bob Powell returned to their home on Kiteroa Place and noticed the fire had crept a lot closer to where they lived.
Bob Powell said he watered the grass outside his property to make sure it wasn’t too dry before going to sleep.
“We got to bed about midnight, and at 5 o’clock this [Thursday] morning the police were rapping on the door and managed to wake us up, and they said ‘you’ve got 15 minutes to get out’, so we departed.”
Fay Powell said they didn’t have trouble sleeping, but they had made precautions to ensure they were prepared if they needed to evacuate.
“I was tired, but we were warned to have something ready, so I actually collected all my photos, packed our bags, all the bits and pieces that we felt were necessary.”
They had been offered a place to stay until they could return home.
“We just don’t know at this stage when we’ll be allowed back. We’re expecting a granddaughter to arrive from Australia in two days as well.”
The prospect of losing their home “wouldn’t be nice”, Bob Powell said.
“We’ve been in there for 35, 36 years, but you don’t cry over anything that can’t cry over you.”
Unstoppable force
They stand huddled together on Bengal Drive, faces drawn and eyes fixed on a house across the valley.
The white wooden house in the pines of the Port Hills stands out amid the charred landscape, waves of smoke rolling across and often obstructing their view.
It’s been their home for more than 20 years and the Poultney family may have been about to watch it burn to the ground. And there was nothing they could do.
“Apart from someone telling you a close family member has died, it’s about as bad as things can get,” Grant Poultney said. Poultney and his wife fled yesterday after seeing flames over the fence.
Last night he watched from Bengal Dr with neighbour Ken Reese.
“I couldn’t even see my house, I had convinced myself that it hadn’t survived the fire.”
It had, but Reese wasn’t so fortunate and the danger hadn’t passed.
Poultney believed there’d been “windows of opportunity” where choppers could’ve effectively put out the fire. Yesterday morning was calm. When choppers arrived the wind had picked up and the fire flared.
“By the time they got here, they didn’t have a shit show.”
Letting sleeping dogs lie
Alistair Hodson lives on Longhurst Tce in Cashmere Hills.
He heard a police officer using a loudspeaker early yesterday telling residents to evacuate. He left for a welfare centre at Halswell library.
“We packed up and ended up here at 2 o’clock.
“We’ve got two dogs in the car, don’t know how they slept. I slept in the accommodation here, and I slept surprisingly well, so I must’ve been a bit tired.”
He said the fire wasn’t close to his house, but he could see it blazing from nearby Victoria Park Rd. He said it was “quite frightening”. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, and I’ve lived up there for 16 years, so it’s quite incredible that Christchurch is dealing with this at the moment. I love my little house up there.”
He was worried about losing his house, but thought a changing wind might be his “saving grace”.
“It’s a bit surreal really.”
He won’t be moved
As fire spread down the hills above his beloved historic Ohinetahi homestead and gardens, Sir Miles Warren wasn’t going anywhere.
About 107 residents on the other side of Governors Bay, Teddington Rd, were evacuated at 3am yesterday.
That order hadn’t extended to the homestead and gardens, but if the call had come, Sir Miles said he wouldn’t have heeded it.
If the house was to go down, he would “go down with it,” he said.
“My plan was to either run to the sea or jump in my pool.”
Yesterday morning he was in the garden at the Ohinetahi homestead, where the plants were coated in falling ash from the fires burning just 300-400m away.
The homestead, a category one heritage building, was built in the 1860s and some of the roses growing in the garden were planted in the 1870s.
Sir Miles, a prominent architect, has lived there for 41 years, having restored the homestead and developed an extensive awardwinning garden with his artist sister Pauline Trengrove.
He gifted the property in 2012 to be kept in a trust for the public.
When he went to bed at 10pm on Tuesday, it had looked like there was just a small fire at the top of the hill, but by morning he estimated the flames had moved to within 400m.
“I thought all was well, so I went to bed and slept easy . . . it’s just quite spooky to see the smoke rising up around my property.”