The owner of a major cut-flower and exotic plant nursery says it could take up to a year to rebuild his operation after fire destroyed parts of the Kumeū property.
Harry Van Lier of Van Lier Nurseries watched as the flames tore apart generations of work.
“Oh, it’s massive. We had 7000 square metres of sheds that the fire ripped through,” he told the Herald.
Fire crews were called at 9.44pm on Saturday night, a Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokeswoman told the Herald this morning.
The building was well alight when crews arrived. Van Lier was waiting for them.
“I was actually asleep [when the alarm was raised]. One of our staff members that lives next door to the property called my wife, who woke me up. And within two minutes, I was at the nursery,” he said.
The third-generation grower couldn’t believe what he was confronted with when he arrived.
“You hear the stories of big fires and you think, how could it happen at my nursery? It’s low-risk.”
Van Lier said the shed that housed their distribution and packaging operation has been destroyed.
Pallets of cardboard boxes were easy fuel for the fire inside.
“The fire was just on one end of the shed when I got there. And the first three fire engines arrived about two minutes after me. But it was progressing so rapidly, I was pretty quickly realising that we were going to lose everything,” he said.
Crews had the fire contained just before midnight but could do little more.
“Firefighters told me that the inferno was too hot and they couldn’t do anything except to stop it spreading further into the greenhouse.”
Whilst a full recovery could take up to 12 months, according to Van Lier, he said time is rapidly running out to salvage the unspoiled stock. Saved from fire, he said his plants are now facing another crisis.
“Our next big issue is we can’t actually irrigate anything in 5000 square metres of glasshouse because the pumps have all been burned, the fertilising tanks have all been burnt. We recycle all of our water and the water collection points have all been burnt.”
Van Lier estimates they have “about a day” to think of a way to irrigate.
“Or we lose millions of dollars’ worth of stock.”
Van Lier said moving the plants isn’t an option.
“No, we wouldn’t find a location that would be big enough. So, it’s very quickly trying to find equipment. Most of our equipment comes in from overseas.”
Since news of the fire broke on Sunday morning, Van Lier has been overwhelmed by the support of his industry.
“I’ve got a huge amount of messages of support from my fellow growers, competitors, but just people that know what that feeling would be like or can understand how I’m feeling. I’m incredibly grateful. All of them have offered to help out in any way that’s possible,” he said.
“It is really nice that even though they’re competitors, that they still reach out.”
One offer was to loan a quarantine space for material that the nursery is expecting in the coming weeks. Their own quarantine area was gutted.
The Van Lier family has a strong reputation in an industry they joined around 60 years ago.
“In 1968, my grandfather registered the business. He’d been growing for a few years before that. I’m the 3rd generation along with my wife. My father’s still involved, but we’ve been running the business for seven or eight years,” Van Lier said.
“We used to be exclusively cut flower growers and we started venturing into tropical plants, and that was the area that got destroyed. There’s a lot of years of investment that have gone into that.
“We expanded it in 2021 through Covid, which was a hell of a time. Then, you know, four years later, it’s up in smoke. Pretty devastating.”
Fire investigators were on-site early this morning but aren’t yet able to indicate how the blaze began.
Mike Thorpe is a senior journalist for the Herald, based in Christchurch. He has been a broadcast journalist across television and radio for 20 years and joined the Herald in August 2024.