BEST SYSTEM OF FIRE PROTECTION USED AT MATAHINA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 94, 1 June 1949, Page 7

BEST SYSTEM OF FIRE PROTECTION USED AT MATAHINA

The system of fire protection in the Matahina plantation, near Te Teko, from which is taken a v great amount of' the timber- pulped at the Whakatane Board Mills, is described by Mr J. L. Harrison-Smith in the New Zealand Journal of Forestry as one of the best possible. Situated south-east of Mount Edgecumbe, the Matahina. has a gross area of 22,000 acres, 14,000 of which are planted in pinus radiata, the remainder being the original scrub and fern. The light pumice soil has a six-inch deep black scoria layer, the result of the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886.,

‘The topography is what land agents, would optimistically call “rolling,” states the author.

Great Fire Hazard The greatest problem in this plantation is the fire hazard in the tin-der-like scrub in summer. The present system of fire protection was evolved from observations of a bulldozer driver, who noted that a narrow fire line would stop a scrub fire meeting it obliquely. He reasoned that, if firebreaks could be arranged so that any approaching fire would be forced to meet a break obliquely an effective firebreak could be built up with much less expenditure of labour and machinery than would be necessary for the conventional single strip, ploughed parallel with the edge of the trees. Firebreak lines, only . 12ft wide, were cut with a bulldozer. These were so arranged that if a fire jumped the outside break, it would meet one of these internal cuts obliquely and burn itself out at the gpex of a section.

To forestall the possibilities of a summer fire starting in the scrub, burning operations were commenced, five acres at a time being burnt out while a crew stood by with a radio in constant contact with State Forest Service headquarters.