PEAT FIRES ON PLAINS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5239, 15 February 1928, Page 2

PEAT FIRES ON PLAINS.

EXTENSIVE ABjEA (BURNING.

POSSIBILITY OF GREAT DAMAGE.

A fire in the peat country between Ngatea and Waitakaruru threatens to do vl:ry great damage, possibly within the ne*xt day or two, unlesfe. its progress is arrested at the Railway Canal west of Ngatea. Strenuous efforts, to check the fire have been made during the past two days by a gang of 15 employees of the. Lands Drainlage Department, and when the small drains on its route were cross 1 ed, efforts were concentrated at a point between the ends of the Orchard West road and the 1 Railway Canal. Here a 35ft fire-break from the end of the canal to the Pouarua Road drains has been cleared of; vegetation, and in the time., remaining the dry peat will ;also be removed. The wet pat is only two or three inches below the surface, and unless a gale springs up from the. north the fire will be. stopped from spreading to the whole of the area to the Kaihere Road, between, the settled land near the river and the foothills. Incalculable damage will be don® to flax lands and farm lands if the fire gets, across the break. The fire became serious, on Sunday last, when it got out of control on a Maukoro canalside farm about a mile and a-half from the WaitakaruruPipiroa road. It spread eastward, and then southward, and has now burned between three or four hundred acres of scrub and peat. Its progress largely depends on the wind, but only a small drain is at present protecting the peat farms of Mr J. W. Neatc, and Mr W. Jones, near the Hopai West and Rawerawe West road.. Much of the land already crossed is occupied for grazing purposes. There are several other fires in the locality, but so far they are under control