Source: Fire and Emergency New Zealand
Improving weather conditions have allowed firefighters from Fire and Emergency New Zealand, New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) and the Department of Conservation to continue working on the containment and extinguishment of the fire in the Waiouru Military Training Area, which began on Monday.
Incident Controller Craig Cottrill says that crews are working today on locating and extinguishing hot spots identified by a drone team overnight. The crews have been reinforced today by 20 fresh NZDF personnel, who will be patrolling the fire edge to check for further hot spots.
“This part of an incident is where things take a bit longer, as the crews need to identify and locate hot spots, then get resources into remote bush areas to dig them out and completely extinguish them,” he says.
“The fire is around 60 percent contained at this point. It will take more time yet to get the last forty percent tidied up, as some of this has deep seated and hard to access hot spots.”
Currently there are 66 firefighting personnel on the fireground, with 18 incident management team personnel supporting them along with one helicopter, four pieces of heavy machinery and six 4×4 fire trucks.
NZDF are also supplying other vehicles where needed to move personnel around the fire ground.
“We are now working towards moving control of the incident into the hands of a NZDF incident management team from Monday” Craig Cottrill says. “Over the next few days we will be reducing Fire and Emergency resources and NZDF will begin to transition back to business as usual.”
Note to editors: there will be a further update on this fire tomorrow afternoon, Sunday.
Captions:
- Father and daughter firefighters 31oct26.jpg — Father and daughter team Doug and Bree out on the fire line.
- Westlawn Hut 31oct26.jpg — The historic Westlawn Hut still stands in a protected area of the fire perimeter.