Recovery begins for scorched Port Hills
Almost a month on from the 650 hectare blaze on Christchurch’s Port Hills, smouldering hot spots have been extinguished and landowners and conservationists alike are assessing the damage.
The fire, first reported to Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) on Valentines Day, appears to have started near Worselys Rd, not far from the spot where one of the 2017 fires began almost seven years ago to the day.
The February 2017 fires burnt through around 1600 hectares of land, destroyed nine homes, took 66 days to fully extinguish, and led to the death of helicopter pilot Steve Askin. was killed
This year’s fires saw more than 100 firefighters, 15 helicopters, two fixed wings planes and 28 fire engines battle the flames at its peak. Over 100 properties were evacuated, one building – a container home – was destroyed, and nearly 40,000 homes were briefly left without electricity.
Deep-seated fires took hold in log processing sites within the 320ha commercial pine plantation, between Worsleys Rd and Dyers Pass and including the Christchurch Adventure Park (CAP), and continued to burn underground for weeks..
In the 2017 fires, more than 80 hectares of the Summit Road Society’s 150ha Ohinetahi Reserve was burnt, and last month’s fire ravaged a smaller part of that reserve.
General manager Bill Martin said the group is still assessing the extent of the damage, but estimates about a third of the area that burned in 2017 had been affected, including some replanted areas.
It was becoming increasingly clear repeated fires were not unexpected in an era of climate change, he said. “While it is quite a loss to us, it’s something we need to adapt to.”
The need for a Port Hills-wide strategy across public and private land, incorporating landowners, user groups and mana whenua, was underlined by this year’s event, he said.
The group is also ordering around 4500 native plants for planting later this year, and would conduct weed control in the interim, with blackberry starting to spring up in burnt areas.
Funding will come from a range of sources, including donations to the Christchurch Foundation’s Port Hills Regeneration Fund.
Christchurch City Council Port Hills fire recovery manager John Filsell said just over 28ha of council reserve land was also affected, 12.6ha of which was a mix of native plantings and natural regeneration.
John McVicar, managing director of McVicar Holdings which owns the long-standing commercial pine plantation, said they had only been able to get into the area relatively recently, and were still “very much in assessment mode”.
FENZ handed back control of CAP to the company last week and general manager Anne Newman said she hoped to make an announcement about a reopening date by the end of this week.