BLAZE IN BUSH RESERVE

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1928, Page 15

BLAZE IN BUSH RESERVE

FIRE ON TE AROHA MOUNTAIN WALL OF FLAME RAZES BIG AREA. RESIDENCES IN DANGER FOR TIME. Uy Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Feb. 10. Fire swept a large area on Te Aroha Mountain last night. For some hours anxiety was felt for the safety of buildings on the outskirts of Te Aroha. Hundreds of acres of picturesque bush and scrub were destroyed. At 10 p.m., when the risk to the town seemed over, there was a wall of flame over a mile long making its way up a gully near Bald Spur. The water reservoir on the hill was endangered and the fears of the residents were aggravated by the failure of the electric light. The fire originated in the Ruakaka suburb, where blackberry was being burned off. At 5.45 p.m. when the alarm was given, the flames had reached thirty feet in height. They jumped a creek and crossed two wide tracks.

Ashes began to fall over the town as sheets of the flame rushed through the dry bush, but the wind carried the sparks away from the residential area.

Trainer’s sawmill was in the centre of the outbreak, and fire-fighters decided to salvage the equipment. The bush -surrounding the mill was demolished rapidly before a wall of fire with a frontage of nearly a mile and a-half. The mill was saved, but -the fire laid waste practically all the bush on which the plant is dependent. The mill engine and wagon were dragged to safety down the mill track as it was feared that the clearing might not prove a sufficient fire break. „ It seemed as if the workers might be cut off from escape by a sudden change of wind, but a lull at the critical moment averted this danger.

As the flames spread through the thick bush several houses were menaced, but they were saved by a change in the direction of the wind. At 10.30 p.m. the fire-fighters concluded that the outskirts of the town were safe and ceased work for the night. The fire had exhausted itself by midnight, though at one time every gully and mountain recess was a raging inferno.

This, morning the mountain appeared as a charred peak, with numerous smoking trunks of trees as grim remnants of one of Nature’s most beautiful collection of trees and shrubs that had taken scores of years to grow. When the fire ascended one peak exceeding 3000 ft in height it gradually died out, having apparently absorbed all the lighter growth during its quick transit across the mountain.