Port Hills reaches extreme fire danger levels similar to deadly 2017 blaze

Wednesday, 12 February 2020

Fire risk manager Darrin Woods discusses the upcoming fire risks in Christchurch’s Port Hills.

Three years to the day, a massive blaze burned through 2000 hectares of scrub and 11 houses on Christchurch's Port Hills.

With the extreme fire danger in Canterbury similar to that in February 2017, Port Hills residents have taken measures to protect their homes.

Ken Reese's family home of 30 years was destroyed in the blaze. The house on Worsleys Rd initially survived flames that ripped through three homes below it on the night of February 15, but was razed to the ground the next morning.

It was a big loss, Reese said.

Tree stumps remain from the 2017 Ports Hills fire.

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'All our personal and sentimental belongings [were] lost forever.'

Their home could have been saved if his property had been checked in the morning or if he had been allowed to defend his property, he said

'It was quite frustrating and most irritating that it had caught fire after the main fire had passed.

'An early morning check on the remaining properties up here to investigate the state of them would've saved our home.'

Flames leap out of a large pine plantation behind Grant Poultney's Worsleys Rd home.

The Reese family rebuilt their home on the same site on Worsleys Rd and moved in last December.

Although the extreme fire danger was concerning, Reese said he felt prepared to defend his home if a similar blaze tore through the area.

Firefighters are bracing for the 'trifecta of danger' as dry, hot and windy conditions are set to combine.

He regularly cleared his property of potential fuels, kept his grass cut short and had two water pumps with 15,000 litres of water in reserve.

'Hopefully lessons were learnt by Fire and Emergency New Zealand and they make a much better shot of it next time,' he said.

According to MetService, only 7.8 millimetres of rain has fallen in Christchurch over the past 30 days. During that same period the mercury has risen to 30 degrees Celsius or above at least five times.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand fire risk manager Darrin Woods said the continual dry conditions were concerning for fire crews monitoring the area.

'Conditions are pretty similar to what we had in 2017 in terms of fuel dryness and the grass curing (percentage of dead grass) and we're in a prohibited fire season, as we were in 2017, but as we know that doesn't stop all fires.'

According to Niwa data, which tracks the fire danger levels across the country, most of Canterbury has a moderate to extreme fire risk. Niwa's Build Up Index (BUI) calculates how much fuel is available for a fire to burn in a given area, based on weather conditions. Values above 60 are high, 80 very high, and 100 is extreme.

Of the 50 stations monitored across Canterbury, 26 are above the BUIs high fire risk threshold. As of Wednesday, the region's most extreme BUI was Hanmer at 147.2.

'Fires under these conditions and certain fuel types will produce flame lengths that we just can't put out and if those conditions manifest [residents] are best to get out of harm's way,' Woods said.

Residents should keep their lawns short, clear any dead scrub and keep all flammable material away from their homes while the fire risk was so high, he said.

A Worsleys Rd property completely destroyed during the Port Hills fires in 2017.

'People have a responsibility to look after their properties but also appreciate the risk that they're in.'

Worsleys Rd resident Grant Poultney saw the fire move along the ridge line towards his house about 1pm on February 14, 2017. He quickly called emergency services.

'The fire [was] coming over the hill, I said 'if you don't get someone up here you're going to lose houses'.'

About an hour later, the fire had moved within 25 metres of his home and was burning through trees. The flames reached about 60m high.

Grant Poultney has installed a sprinkler system to protect his house.

'I said to my wife, 'there's no way this house can survive'. It was life-threatening.'

Before being evacuated by police, Poultney turned on a garden sprinkler near his house.

The fire burnt through his fenceline, garden and got within a metre of the house, leaving it 'all black' with soot, but there was no structural damage to the building.

'It literally wiped around the house and came back together and carried on down the hill, but a lot of that is because I managed to get sprinklers out.'

Poultney upgraded to a new sprinkler system attached to a 40,000l water tank that follows his fence line.

Worsleys Rd resident of 27 years, Grant Poultney with his fire hose.

He also has electric and petrol-powered pumps in case a fire cuts power to the area as it did back in 2017.

'People are taking steps like this now which is making us feel way better,' he said.

Woods said fire crews had been increasing fire danger signage, clearing dead scrub and bulldozing along paddocks on Worsleys Rd to create fire breaks.

However, without a sustained period of rain the extreme fire danger would remain, he said.

Christchurch City Council Port Hills head ranger Paul Devlin is among the council staff and volunteers working to reduce the fire risk on the hills following the 2017 blaze.

They focused specifically on reserve land on the Port Hills at Marleys Hill, Mt Ada and Kennedys Bush.

To reduce fuel buildups, they cut away high grass and grazed sheep in more difficult areas.

More recently, green fire breaks have been trialled - a process of planting strips of more fire resilient native plants.

So far, about 12,800 plants have been added across 1.5 kilometres of the Port Hills.

'Everything burns but what these [plants] can effectively do is buy the fire service a bit of time to get to the fire and have a fire that is behaving with less intensity than it normally would.'

However, the green breaks would not work to full effect until they had full canopy cover, which could take about four years to achieve, Devlin said.

'Until they get canopy closure there's always going to be threads of fuel … that allow the fire to travel through them.'

In the meantime, the council would be focusing on increasing mowing in the Port Hills and encouraging residents to plant their own fire resilient native plants.