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There is a time and a place for everything, as the old saying goes, and Waitangi Day was the time and Heathcote Valley was the place where nature sought to wreak havoc and destruction with a fierce blaze on the hillsides of Heathcote and Horotane. When faced with disaster we all hope that we have the nerve, the courage, and the resources to face and cope with whatever dangers nature and human willfulness throw at us.
There is another old saying, “cometh the hour cometh the man”, and on this occasion it was “the men”. Literally it was the men of the fire brigades and the men in their helicopters who came to our rescue and subdued the raging inferno that threatened to overwhelm parts of our valleys; and for their skill, their resourcefulness, their nerve and their courage we must all be for ever grateful and in deep admiration.
Drina and I were returning to the valley mid afternoon and, as we passed over the Durham Street overbridge, we saw the thick black pall of smoke from the fire in the Cashmere Valley, and remarked on the fearful risk such a dry summer as this brings to residents living close to bush and tussock country. We had been back at home in our secure and safe little valley barely ten minutes when a cry from Kit Chambers had us running up to see the pillars of smoke rising into the sky scarce 250 metres from our gate. Was this the same fire that we had seen at Cashmere? No this was a new and different fire that had originated on the edge of the Tunnel Road opposite the end of Martindales Road. It seemed that within an instant the fire service were appearing on Tunnel Road and fighting the blaze. The time was then about 4:45 pm.
It is hard to judge time in these events but my camera recorded the time of the first helicopter picture at 5:10 pm, a remarkably quick deployment on a public holiday; and the second chopper was about 20 minutes later with the third some time after that. The air was thick with the sound of chopper blades for about 2 hours but by 7:30 pm the battle had been largely won and peace had been restored to the valley, although the fireman had still many hours of damping down of hotspots ahead of them before they could say “the fire is out”.
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