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Home / Hawkes Bay Today

Editorial: Rubber necks put lives at risk

By Tracey Chatterton
Hawkes Bay Today·
17 Jan, 2016 03:50 PM2 mins to read

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Car loads of people pulled up to watch crews battle a large scrub fire.

Car loads of people pulled up to watch crews battle a large scrub fire.

It's human nature to want to know what's happening.

It is, after all, what keeps us newspapers in business.

However, there are times when people need to fight the urge to get closer and find out what's happening.

Rubber-neckers, I'm talking to you.

Car loads of people pulled up near Park Island on Friday afternoon to watch crews battle a large scrub fire.

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It is still unclear how the blaze started. We now know it started on Oak Rd and not on the side of Prebensen Drive as previously thought.

It was a frightening experience for nearby homeowners who had their power switched off and were evacuated as their properties were at risk.

Thankfully scrub fires such as this are rare in our region, which I suspect added to the allure for onlookers who probably had never seen a helicopter used to douse flames before.

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However, it proved to be a pain for emergency services.

Detective Sergeant Darren Pritchard said there had been a "level of frustration" for emergency services at the number of people who watched the fires.

"We have emergency services wanting to limit the amount of damage and keep people safe," he told Hawke's Bay Today.

Yet these people were putting themselves in danger.

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If you come across a scene like that again, I urge you to give the emergency services their space and let them do their job.

We, the media, are there covering the important events in our region so jump online, switch on the radio and pick up a paper to find out what's been going on.

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