HAURAKI INFERNO

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 283, 20 February 1928, Page 9

HAURAKI INFERNO

FIRE BEYOND CONTROL GREAT DAMAGE POSSIBLE WHIRLWIND CARRIES SPARKS (From Our Otrn Correspondent ) NGATEA. Sunday. The fire in the peat land west of Ngatea, which has been burning for a week, got out of control at midday on Saturday and is now raging in soft, mossy peat and dense fern and scrub. An area of a thousand acres of millable flax is directly endangered and the chances of saving it are remote. Everything depends on the wind, for a stiff breeze would spread the fire with great rapidity and it might cover thousands of acres and do thousands of pounds worth of damage until stopped by the Kaihere Road or the Puhanga Canal. The Lands Drainage Department has a big gang at work and the Torehapo flaxmiller, Mr. Ingram, is employing all the men he can get to make a firebreak from the end of the WaitakaruruMaukoro canal to the Torehape-Pu-I hanga Road. At present a clearing is | being made and if time and the wind permits back-burning will be done. To-morrow the Lands Department will make strenuous efforts to make a firebreak that will prevent the fire crossing the Pouarua Road. This is a long way from the present seat, but it is the only place where there is a reasonable chance of stopping winddriven flames. Should this road be crossed the fire will be in occupied peat farms and the flax plantations and the flax experimental station of Mr. G. Smerle. The fire started in settled land near Waitakaruru on Sunday last and spread eastward and then southward for many miles. After efforts to stop it at the Hopai West and Rawerawo ; West Roads the Lands Drainage Department made a wide firebreak from I tl *e corner of the Orchard West and Pouarua Roads to the end of the canal which is being dredged to make an embankment and drain the land for the proposed Paeroa-Pokeno railway. A strip 35 feet wide was cleared, the drv surface peat removed and back-burn'-one * Friday the break was as effective as it was possible to make it and it was thought the position was safe. Patrols had been maintained day and night, though at the time the smoke was so dense that it was imVossible to see more than two yards. About noon on Saturday a whirl"wind which lasted for a quarter of an hour lifted sparks high in the air and dropped them in the dense scrub about five chains south of the canal. The canal and its two embankments are about two chains wide. OTHER FIRES NOW SAFE The other fires on the Hauraki Plains are now safe and no great damage has been done, with the exception of the destruction of 300 acres of flax on the right bank of the Piako River, near the mouth of the Waikaka Cana!. The origin of this fire is very mysterious, for the area around the flax was burned as late as October last and there was no chance of timber having smouldered since then without having been noticed.