Lost services regretted

Press, 17 December 1988, Page 2

Lost services regretted

By

RICHARD CRESSWELL

The fire at Burgess’s plantation near Dunsandel which flared up and scorched 200 hectares had been burning for eight hours before being reported. The chief executive of the Selwyn Plantation Board, Mr Bill Studholme, said the fire could have been spotted earlier by an old Forest Service water tower at the nearby Eyrewell Forest. The service went after the break-up of the Forest Service and with it “the most effective fire-fight-ing teams in the whole country,” he said. ■ “Dismantling the Forest Service sent equipment flying in all directions into Timberlands and the Department of Conservation,” he said. The most valuable firefighters in fighting the Burgess Plantation fire had been the original members of the Forest Service fire-fighting team, he said.

However, he also praised the work by the army staff and volunteers in helping to prevent the fire from spreading. New State-owned enterprises could not be expected to continue to staff the Eyrewell tower under new commercial policies, he said. Both the member of Parliament for Ashburton,

Mrs Jenny Shipley, and the Minister of Forestry, Mr Tapsell, toured the fire site yesterday, and Mr Tapsell pledged equipment and Cabinet support in fighting the fire. “The fire risk in that area and most of Canterbury is now extremely severe,” said Mr Studholme. In his 23 years experience in forestry work in the Canterbury region he had never known the forests to be so dry, so early in the season, he said. “It is normally this dry about February, so we are in for 15 more weeks of a dry period like this. That is a daunting prospect,” he said. He said that the fire was a local “disaster” and that people in Canterbury should be especially careful in the dry weather. Damage to the plantation has been estimated to have cost the board $5 million.