50 men contain big Conway scrub fire

Press, 23 February 1978, Page 3

50 men contain big Conway scrub fire

About 50 firemen and volunteers battled through the small hours yesterday morning to contain a big scrub fire which threatened to engulf the Conway River Store, 40km south of Kaikoura. Flames came to within 20m of the store at the height of the blaze, and firemen had to keep hosing down the wooden building to stop it being ignited by sparks. The Cheviot Volunteer Fire Brigade pumped water from the nearby Conway River to fight the fire, which was still smouldering late yesterday afternoon. *‘l was pretty worried at that stage, I can tell you,”

said the owner oi the store .Mr J. G. McNally). “I thought the store and house and everything would go up, but we managed to beat it back.” Flames soared more than 15m high as the fire raged through tinder-dry gorse and broom along the roadside south of the store.

By the time the blaze was finally brought under control early yesterday morning it had blackened about 200 acres of scrub round the store.

The fire started on the roadside a few hundred metres south of the store about 3 p.m. on Tuesday. The cause is not known for sure, but Mr McNally suspects the fire was started by

a cigarette butt thrown from a passing car. “You could see the smoke for miles around, and just about all the locals turned up in no time,” Mr McNally said. “They did a great job. If they had not been there I would not have had a store or a house now.”

Mr McNally said the lack of wind had also helped the fire-fighters. “There was a howling nor’-wester blowing a few miles each side of the river, but luckily it was dead calm where we were,” he said.