HOT SPOT: The view of the Big Saddle area on the Masterton-Castlepoint road last week, where a blaze re-ignited in high winds yesterday. It first erupted last week in the midst of the 800-hectare Erindale Forest. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA
HOT SPOT: The view of the Big Saddle area on the Masterton-Castlepoint road last week, where a blaze re-ignited in high winds yesterday. It first erupted last week in the midst of the 800-hectare Erindale Forest. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA
Wind has again fanned a blaze to life at Erindale Forest, in the same area where gales turned a small fire into an inferno last week.
Fire service communications supervisor Jan Wills said the high winds had, soon after 12pm yesterday, re-ignited embers from the earlier blaze in the midstof the 800-hectare pine forest at the Big Saddle area, on the Masterton-Castlepoint road.
She said the re-ignited fire was "not major," but a Wairarapa rural fire officer was at the scene and a helicopter was using a monsoon bucket to contain and douse the blaze.
There had been no New Zealand Fire Service crews dispatched to the scene by late afternoon yesterday, she said. The earlier fire had broken out when a logging crew worker was using a chainsaw and an exhaust spark ignited dry pine needles on the forest floor, just before noon on Thursday.
Up to four helicopters and 40 firefighters had battled the blaze, which became ferocious as winds of up to 100km/h roared throughout the night.
The fire was eventually contained on Friday, after some early morning rainfall that day and the winds dropping, but not before flames had consumed about 25ha of mostly felled pine and 5ha of standing trees.
Grant Davies, deputy principal rural fire officer for Wairarapa, said the dousing of last week's blaze had been "a good save and the helicopters did a great job".
