Basil and Swamp Swept By Fires

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 247, 9 January 1928, Page 1

Basil and Swamp Swept By Fires

CONCERN IN WAIKATO PEAT COUNTRY BURNING Alarm it baing felt in certain parts of the Waikato at the extant of the buah fire* now raging in tovoral districts. Hundreds of acraa of swamp land are also iblaia at the back of Te Rahu, five or six miles’ from Te Awarnutu. THE fire has approached within five * or six chains of the residence of Mr. A. Thomas, Te Rahu. The swamp at Te Rawa is also burning, but serious trouble there is not expected. A gorse fire swept over the Pukekohe Domain on Saturday. The fire brigade was summoned and mastered the outbreak before it could spread to an area of peat land adjacent to the Domain. For over a week hundreds of acres of peat country between Morrinsville and Ruakaka, and extending in a northerly direction through the black country districts of Motumaoho, Tauhei, as far as Patetonga, have been burning. A heavy 'pail of smoke obliterates the sun. The Buakura swamp is also the ecene of raging fires. Numerous fences have been destroyed, and a large number of settlers are working day and night attempting to keep the flres from several plantations of flax, recently established at Gordonton. An extensive blaze is raging in the Monovale swamp, near Cambridge, and the thick smoke makes it impossible to see more than half a mile. Passengers on the Limited from Wellington this morning said that the smoke from the Rukuhia Swamp was most uncomfortable and almost blinded them. The swamp has been burned and is now smouldering. It has been throwing off dense volumes of smoke for ibout a week past. Although the peat is smouldering juite dose to the railway line there is no danger. The swamp is burned I*7 year during the summer months.