Cleo Rameka (second right) and other members of the Waipapakauri Ramp bucket brigade.
The first thing Kaitaia's Chief Fire Officer Craig Rogers did when he saw the location of a fire was to call for two helicopters.
They weren't needed, as it happened, but the fire, in the community forest at Waipapakauri Ramp, had the potential to be little short of calamitous.
The
alarm was raised at 6.51pm last Tuesday, but by then residents had already swung into action. The fire, 50 metres into the forest from West Coast Rd, just east of The Park, had been effectively dealt with by the time the first of two fire appliances arrived, although the crews went in with hoses and hosed the area with water just to make sure it wasn't going to reignite.
It was Johnny Jones, who was mowing hay nearby, who first smelled smoke. He alerted Krystal-Rose Taaffe, and within minutes the source of the smoke had been found and a bucket brigade had been formed.
Nine-year-old Cleo Rameka, who was one of the youngsters who helped cart water across the road and into the forest, said later that her swimming pool was in need of a top-up after the firefighting effort.
