Volunteers support in recent fires at short notice

Over the last few weeks, Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) worked hard to contain four big vegetation fires in Selwyn.

The Council’s Emergency Management Team and several Selwyn emergency management volunteers supported FENZ with its work on all fires, by lending a hand where help was needed and assisting with evacuations and welfare needs of the local communities.

The Bridge Hill fire near Craigieburn, which started on Thursday 5 December burned through 980 hectares of Canterbury high country and is now contained.

Dick and Lin Moore, who are part of the Castle Hill Village Community Response Team, volunteered their time to assist Isaacs with traffic management on Thursday and opened the Castle Hill Community Hall for FENZ to operate from, while helping provide local knowledge.

The pair say they are passionate about helping their community in emergency events, both are trained firefighters and permanent residents in the village, so whenever there’s an emergency, they do what they can to help. Alongside other community firefighters, they also assisted in locating some of the hot spots of the fire and assisted FENZ with their planning to counter the southward spread of the fire.

“We felt satisfied that we were able to do something to help and put our community response training and fire training into practice, using firefighting equipment and facilities in the Village” Lin Moore said.

Following this large fire, two fires in the Kirwee and West Melton area started on Sunday 8 December. The first fire on Sunday morning started in the Waimakiriri riverbed and was contained by the following day.

Later that Sunday night, smoke could be smelt across the district when another fire started about 8km away, near popular recreation area, The Willows. Due to the proximity of this fire to residents, the Council’s emergency management team and emergency management volunteers assisted FENZ in evacuations and opened the West Melton Community Centre for evacuees.

Marie Mallon, who is the team leader for the local Community Response Team was on site with six other volunteers in her team to set up the community centre and help make the evacuees feel comfortable.

She says it was good for her team to be there and be able to help people. While some volunteers were sent home early, a few stayed on until 1.30am.

“This was the first time we have had to open the West Melton Community Centre for an event, so it was a whole new experience but, we worked really well together as a team and the whole thing was a success. We all committed to it and it was good to see so many of us there. It was overall very positive.”

Also assisting with the evacuees were five Selwyn Emergency Support Team members including volunteer Mo Coshall, who stayed until the morning in case more people had to be evacuated.

She says she also had the pleasure of waking the evacuees at 5am to tell them they could return to their homes.

“At very short notice, five of our team members were ready and able to be deployed to help out the community. And it felt good to be able to provide a place of safety to our local residents at a time of great anxiety for them,” she says.

On Thursday 12 December, the Community Response Team volunteers from Rolleston and Dunsandel also set up nearby community centres to accommodate potential evacuees, after fires started along State Highway 1 between Burnham and Dunsandel. Thankfully, the community centres were not needed as those who were evacuated did not require them and no further evacuations past the initial ones were carried out.

Mayor Sam Broughton says he appreciates the long hours and efforts of FENZ and our hard-working volunteers in these wildfires.

“Thank you to FENZ and all our volunteers and teams who selflessly gave up their time to assist with the fires and make sure our community at Castle Hill, West Melton and Kirwee were all looked after and kept safe.”

The Council’s Head of Emergency Management Al Lawn says all volunteers involved should be recognised as our local everyday heroes and he thanks their families and employees for supporting them and enabling them to put in the long hours.

As we transition into recovery, FENZ advised that a restricted fire season came into effect as of 1am Wednesday 11 December.

The Council’s Emergency Management Team are helping to facilitate recovery efforts with Environment Canterbury to install sediment traps to prevent soil erosion into Lake Pearson and other surrounding water ways.

Recent efforts led by Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) and Environment Canterbury to reduce the fire hazard of wilding pine in the Craigieburn area was thought to have also helped minimise the size of the fire and the danger level. The Council has also removed some wilding pines form Castle Hill Village and has a planned programme for removing further wilding pines as a part of the Castle Hill Reserves Management Plan.