ACRES OF FLAMES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 92, 20 April 1933, Page 5

ACRES OF FLAMES

PASTURE AND BUSH

RAIN SAVES HOMESTEAD

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") : CHRISTCHUHCH, This Day. Hundreds of acres of pasture and ! bush were destroyed by fires which ■ started on Mr. John Hackle's station • at Puhipuhi, Kaikoura, yesterday during a raging nor'-wester. The fire seriously threatened at least one homestead, which was saved from destruction by a sudden change in the wind and a shower of rain. The fire first started in tho bush near an old unemployment camp, and in tho sixty-milc-an-hour gale was soon out of control. Tho flames swept upliill towards the homestead of Mr. Mackle, on the Kaiwhare Block. Within an hour the whole countryside was ! ablaze, and 460 acres of a block of 500 ' acres had been reduced to a blacki •.•iii:'i > charred expanse. About a hundred settlers fought the (ire, but were handicapped by the gale and the very dry condition of the bush and grass. After streunous fire-fighting the settlers cut a fire-break in the scrub along the Kaiwhare stream, and confined the blaze to the stand of virgin bush in a gully, thus preventing destruction of the homestead. Tho flames then spread along to Maungamauini, destroying acres of pasture on Mr. P. J. Boyd's property and on to tlic Blue Duck Valley. At 10.45 the wind suddenly veered to tlie south, and rain fell heavily, for an hour, during which the fire-fighters got the flames under control. Only the, vain saved Mr. Mackle's homestead, from which the family had removed the furniture to a place of safety. A second fire, of less serious proportions, broke out on Mr. Pat Smith's farm on tlie east bank of the Waimangararo stream, and burned a good extent of bush fern and dry grass before thn rain extinguished it. A third outbreak in the Charwcll Valley, also in the Kaikoura county, on the Kaikoura-Waiau Road, destroyed acres of grassland and flax country.