Forged by fire

The mid-afternoon fire at Wattie's on February 19, 1962, was a moment in time half-a-century ago. Two hours in which the success story of Hawke's Bay industry seemed to go up in flames.

But Jim Wattie never saw it that way, and neither did the staff, who were employed in an era when people expected that when they got a job with such a substantial employer they could, short of a disaster, expect to have it for life.

Despite the late-afternoon fire's destruction of the main steam line from the boiler to the processing plant, only part of the million-dollar devastation, production was back in full-swing just 50 hours after the alarm went up.

Hastings man Ron Goodall, a mechanic in the Wattie's garage at the time, and one of the first to see the flames, doesn't recall ever thinking there might not have been a job for him the next day, and tells of some remarkable spirit among the workers.

Many stayed on to help the firefighters into the night as the clean-up began. They were reminded to make sure they claimed the overtime, and they worked many more hours to get the plant going again.

But many donated it back to the boss, who became Sir James Wattie four years later for service to the food industry, dating back to when he and Harold Carr started J Wattie Canneries in 1934.

"Everybody felt sorry for him," said Mr Goodall, who was eventually to serve 32 years in the company's employ.

On February 22, the day after production resumed, the boss' gratitude was evident in an advertisement he placed in the Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune and Napier's Daily Telegraph:

"During my 60 years of life, if I ever had the slightest doubt of the existence of good neighbourliness and the sincerity of humanity, they have been completely obliterated by personal experience in the past few days."

Crucial to the dramatic recovery, to some extent comparable to the rebirth of Napier and Hastings in the years since the 1931 earthquake, was the saving of the boiler room, and its four high-pressure steam boilers, the largest units of their type in New Zealand.

It would have stopped production for months had the boiler been knocked out.

The viability of the plant and the company would have been at huge risk during an era when food processing was snowballing globally, some of it based on the initiative and prowess developed in Hastings, although major competitors in New Zealand and Australia were quick to offer their help.

Its saving was a dramatic moment which Mr Goodall witnessed at close-hand.

"It had a double-layer back wall," he recalled. "The outer wall bowed right and it was only when the firemen turned the hoses on it ... it just stood back up. It was the only thing that saved it."

Just as crucial was the restoration of the steam line, made possible by the immediate availability of pipes from the Hastings branch of plumbing and electrical engineers, and metal founders, and manufacturers, A and T Burt. When Mr Goodall returned to work the morning after the fire, recovery was well under way, and he became involved in building the A-frames which would become the temporary support of the new steam line.

When the fire happened, Watties was near peak production.

In the yard were stacked 500 cases of williams bon chretien pears, part of a record harvest. Beans and tomatoes had reached their peak, and peaches were to come within a week.

Afternoon smoko had just gone when Mr Goodall looked out from the garage, where among other duties he had occasionally helped service the Wattie Packard, then the Jag, and later the Bentley.

"We spotted the smoke through the roof, and another mechanic and I went over to check it out," he said.

Flames were licking up the walls where they used to make chippies, but there was no hose.

"We would have been able to put it out," he said, "but there was nothing there. It just roared away after that."

Within minutes the first trucks had arrived from the Hastings Fire Brigade, under the direction of its chief, Tiger Harlen.

Rumour had it that with twin-city rivalry ablaze as much as the fire, Mr Wattie had to call the Napier brigade, but, whatever, fire was soon engulfing the factory.

Smoke could be seen as far as 80 kilometres away and the fire destroyed a new quick-freezing, free-flow tunnel and pea quick-freeze department, New Zealand's only beer can lacquering plant, labelling and air compressor plants, and a laboratory.

Huge amounts of plant and stock were lost.

One issue was the tunnel in the King St factory, insulated its entire length with polystyrene, pouring clouds of low-lying dense black smoke across Hastings to the south. Flames spread rapidly and laterally through a zero chamber to a store containing millions of empty cans, and on towards the boiler room and administration area and cafeteria.

The vital 15cm steam pipe, a lifeline for the production, was destroyed when the roof of the food processing plant collapsed and part of the east wall fell outwards.

The fire was reported as the most spectacular in Hawke's Bay since the 1931 earthquake, with damage assessed at half-a-million pounds ($1 million).

It retained this acclaim until the Tomoana freezing works fire in 1979, at an estimated cost of $20 million, and was said to have been the biggest insurance loss in New Zealand to that time.

Within hours of the Monday afternoon fire, undamaged beans and tomatoes were on their way to Wattie's Gisborne factory, and loaders and trucks had started removing hundreds of tonnes of debris, and the first work had begun on the replacement pipe.

The boilers were ignited at 3pm on Wednesday, at 5.20pm a series of short blasts on the factory whistled production was about to resume, and the new shift on at 6pm had the plant rolling again, almost as if nothing had happened.

The cause of the fire was never firmly established, but from what he saw, Mr Goodall believes it may have started within the ground floor chippies operation.

More common opinion at the time was that it started on the first floor level, from an electrical fault or a cigarette butt.