SWEPT BY FIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 47, 25 February 1942, Page 6

SWEPT BY FIRE

PLANTATION AT WAITANGI

(P.A.)

AUCKLAND, Feb. 24.

Practically the whole of the planted area on the Waitangi National Trust endowment was destroyed in a fire which swept Mount Bledisloe this afternoon. The fire was observed shortly after 4 o'clock, and though a large number of men assembled in an endeavour to check the flames and save at least a portion of the trees, the area was almost completely swept.

A strong north-east wind was blowing, carrying the flames through the trees on the slopes of the mountain above Waitangi" House. Fortunately the fire did not cross the road into the Waitangi National Reserve and the Treaty House wes not endangered.

The area affected by the fire is administered by the Forestry Department and the planting of exotic trees has been carried on for the past eight years, the plantations covering some hundreds of acres. The growth had added greatly to the beauty of the mountain, some of the trees having reached a height of from 16 to 20 feet. The forestry area contained a large assortment of eucalyptus and fir trees. In some years the Department's staff has planted out as many as 70,000 trees in a season.

Italians in raising the gold from the Egypt. Six moorings were laid in a circle which had a radius of 800 feet, the angle between each mooring being 60 degrees. As the exigencies of war made it Impossible to obtain steel buoys substitutes were made of pressure cylinders enclosed in wooden crates and two-ton blocks of concrete were used in place of anchors. The pendants between the concrete blocks and the buoys were made up of anchor cables, wire, swivels, and shackles. It was soon found that this gear was inadequate, j PLAYED THE DEVIL WITH IT. Wind and current played the devil with it. Even when the concrete blocks were backed with an anchor and fifteen fathoms of heavy cable they still dragged. It- was then resolved to sink six five-ton concrete blocks and to these kauri log buoys were made fast. These were an improvement, but on occasions uncountable the moorings continued to drag towards the centre of the circle. Once, during a northerly blow, the Claymore contrived to take one mooring in a voyage of five miles! Small wonder was it that the perpetual necessity of raising and relaying these objectionable but essential objects frayed the tempers of all hands. In the end "mooring" became a term of vitupera-' tion. In fact, to be called a "mooring" was to acknowledge that one had sunk to the nethermost grade of unpopularity.

Under favourable conditions the system worked perfectly, for the Claymore, by pulling on this mooring line or that, could be moved to the precise position required by the diver below.