DESTRUCTIVE FIRE

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 224, 20 April 1933, Page 5

DESTRUCTIVE FIRE

MUCH DAMAGE DONE Blaze During Raging Gale LONG FIGHT WITH FLAMES Homestead Threatened Press Association —Copyright Christchurch, Today—Hundreds of acres of pasture and bush were destroyed by fires which started on Mr. John Mackie’s station at Puhipuhi, Kaikcura, yesterday, during a raging norwester. The fire seriously threatened at least one homestead, which was saved from destruction by a sudden change in the wind and a shower o i rain.

The fire first started in the bush near an old unemployment camp, and in the sixty mile an hour gale was soon out or control. The flames swept uphill toward the homestead of Mr. Mackle, on the Kaiwhare Block. Within an hour the whole countryside was ablaze, and 4GO acres of a block of 50U acres had been reduced to a blackened, charred expanse.

About a hundred settlers fought the lire, but were handicapped by the gale and the very dry condition of the bush and grass. After strenuous fire-fighting the settlers cut a firebreak 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.

The flames then spread along to Maungamaimu, destroying acres of pasture on Mr, P. J. Boyd’s property and on to the Blue Duck Valley. At 10.45 the wind suddenly veered to the south, and rain fell heavily for an hour, during which the fire-lighters got the flames under control. Only the rain saved Mr. Mackle’s homestead, from which the family had removed the furniture to a place of safety.

A second fire, of less serious proportion, broke out on Mr. Pat Smith's farm on the east bank of the Waimangararo stream, and burned a good extent of bush fern and dry grass before the rain extinguished it.

A third outbreak in the Charwell Valley, also in the Kaikoura County, on the Kaikoura-Waiau Road, destroyed acres of grassland and flax country.