RACE AGAINST TIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 7

RACE AGAINST TIME.

VALUABLES BURIED. BUSH FIRES IN POVERTY BAY. (Prom Our Correspondent.) GISBORNE, Friday. The experience of the McLean family in Moanui Valley, near Matawai, when a log and fern fire swept up to and destroyed their home, was related today. Up to the last possible moment before the house was given over to the flames the family worked to secure themore valuable of their possessions and two boys suffered burns. Stuart McLean, aged 11, to-day bore traces of his experience, portion of his hair having been singed off, while his elder brother, Percy, Aged 18, suffered superficial burns on the back occasioned when his shirt caught fire in the last minutes of their effort to ensure the safety of the household valuables. The fire in the valley started about a week ago in fern growing on an old burn and did not assume serious proportions until Wednesday, when the wind lifted the flames and swept them through the underbrush leaping from log heap to log heap and approaching the McLean homestead at an alarming speed. When danger became imminent and efforts to check the advance of the blaze proved fruitless, the family dug a pit and proceeded to bury movable articles in the house. As their work proceeded the blaze crept closer and finally it, took the house in its stride. The men of the family had still to complete the burial of their property and worked amid showers of sparks and burning leaves, which flew before the wind. The homestead, which the McLeans occupied only recently, was a five-roomed residence. With all the contents which Mr. McLean and his sons were unable to remove, it went up in smoke. The family will lose heavily by way of stock, it is believed, there being little time to remove sheep and cattle from the paddocks swept by the lire. A cessation of the westerly gale yesterday brought about an immediate improvement in the situation of a number of settlers, whose properties had been threatened with destruction by the fasttravelling log and fern fires.