Family flees burning hay

Press, 21 May 1982, Page 1

Family flees burning hay

Burning hay blown by a north-westerly gale shattered the windows of a house on Mount Somers station, in Mid-Canterbury early yesterday.

The sheep station manager, Mr Martin Taylor, and his wife, Leone, were showered with sparks and burning embers as they hustled their children from their home downwind of a blazing haybarn. “When we left I didn’t think we would have anything to go back to,” Mrs Taylor said yesterday. Violent winds reminiscent of the great storm of August, 1975, caused widespread disruption throughout Mid-Can-terbury before dawn, starting fires, bringing down trees, and cutting power to thousands of homes. In Ashburton a garage was blown over a fence and a bicycle shed was hurled up into power lines. The fire on Mount Somers station, which started just before 2 a.m. when an uprooted tree fell on a powerline, destroyed the haybarn and 4000 bales of lucerne hay, valued at ?6 a bale. Three houses on the station were evacuated. The 60 firemen who fought the blaze were in constant danger from flying sheets of iron from the haybarn, but they managed eventually to get close enough with a bulldozer to smother the flames with soil. Mr Taylor said it was “a miracle” that the three houses had survived. The wind-blown hay had created a wall of flame, with burning bales “flying” down the paddock. The weather which brought unseasonally warm, gusty north-westerlies to Christchurch yesterday did not fulfil dire predictions of yet another deluge on the West Coast, although there

were electrical storms, and heavy rain in areas such as Otira, Parts of South Westland, south of the glaciers, had been told to expect up to 200 mm of rain in the ranges, and up to 100 mm in coastal areas, but only 40mm had been recorded at Haast yesterday morning. High winds buffeted Wellington closing the airport to Friendship aircraft and causing problems for motorists on some roads. Two men suffered minor leg injuries when their truck crashed on the Rimutaka Hills, at the north end of the Hutt Valley. The highest gust for the day was 68 knots at 6.55 a.m., but the gusty, rainy weather continued, closing the airport to Friendship flights until early evening.

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