Huge effort to contain fire as locals flee area

BATTLE: Firefighter Doven Hau works on containing a massive forest fire threatening up to 40 homes on the Pouto Peninsula. PHOTO/JOHN STONE

Half of the 40 families threatened by a large fire that tore through 205ha of forest in Kaipara have evacuated while others have loaded up their stuff and are on standby.

Police are following leads into the fire, treated as suspicious, on Kellys' Bay Rd, Pouto Peninsula, where up to 100 firefighters are battling the blaze on a commercial forest, on the ground and in the air with helicopters. The fire started on Monday evening.

Additional crews arrived from Thames, Whitianga, Tongariro, Whakatane, and a rural fire team from Auckland, yesterday to help teams from the Department of Conservation, forestry companies and Whangarei-based Forest Protection Services.

DoC spokeswoman in Northland, Sue Reed Thomas, said about 20 of the 40 residents along Kellys Bay Rd moved yesterday but did so voluntarily as their homes were not in immediate danger from the fire.

"The biggest challenge for us is a change in wind direction and intensity. Winds picked up in the last hour of so (about lunch hour yesterday) but it's not as intense yet."

Officials monitoring the fire predicted 60km/h winds from the north-west overnight Thursday but it arrived late yesterday.

However, the fire had not reacted as expected. Crews were late yesterday trying to hold the blaze within a 10km margin, she said.

"The fire is probably 50 per cent contained but there are areas of risk."

Firefighting today would largely depend on the weather.

"It's still very dry and although there were showers, we need a whole day's rain to have any impact on the fire," Ms Thomas said.

Detective Andrew Bailey of Dargaville police said various lines of enquiries have been undertaken to identify who lit the fire.

"The fire is suspicious and we've spoken to residents, undertaken scene examination and are following leads," he said.

For a second time in five days Kelly's Bay Rd residents Cyril and Juliet Ranginui yesterday packed their precious possessions into bags and readied themselves for evacuation. The truck is loaded up and so are the supplies. They were not among the 20 that had already moved.

"We have got our escape routes planned out and we've got food for about four days," Mr Ranginui said. If they were forced from their home where they had lived for more than 25 years they would go through paddocks backing onto their property down to family baches on the water.

"It's still burning in the trees. We are ready for it and have our things ready. "It's pretty vicious fire, once it gets going. I saw it three years ago when it was burning on the North side of our house and there wasn't much the crews could do except call in the helicopters."

Mr Ranginui said they had food and he would take a fishing net with him if they had to escape."