{"id":127251,"date":"2025-11-10T03:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T03:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/127251\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T03:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T03:36:09","slug":"tongariro-national-park-fire-firefighters-recall-armageddon-blaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/127251\/","title":{"rendered":"Tongariro National Park fire: Firefighters recall \u2018Armageddon\u2019 blaze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four National Park volunteer firefighters responded quickly but the blaze was already bigger than a football pitch and moving fast<\/a> when they arrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fire conditions were such that it was just blowing it away at speed,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really clear from the moment it started that it was out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

She praised her crew for immediately requesting helicopters and back-up water tankers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey could see they just needed to get on to it as fast as they could … they just did the best they could with the water they had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swift said with four people, they only really could attack one flank of the fire.<\/p>\n

Their efforts soon tore through the 2000 litres of water on board their fire truck.<\/p>\n

\"NationalNational Park firefighters on the frontline. <\/p>\n

Swift said the urban brigade was usually called out to a reticulated area so the crew could plug into a hydrant to get more water onto the truck.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at a rural job, it\u2019s not like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 15-minute wait for back-up felt like an eternity to the crew.<\/p>\n

When a second truck arrived, those firefighters immediately hit the right-hand side of the blaze.<\/p>\n

But it continued to burn out of control, quickly consuming hundreds of hectares, then thousands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a sinking feeling,\u201d Swift said, when asked how a firefighter felt knowing they were trying everything, but the flames continued to spread.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weight of that sits on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AerialAerial shots of the Tongariro wildfire, which as of Monday had burnt about 2800ha. Photo \/ Fire and Emergency New Zealand<\/p>\n

The national park was the brigade\u2019s backyard. The crews knew it well \u2013 its wildlife and its deep connection and meaning to its tangata whenua.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are places that we walk and we adventure all the time,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re thinking is it going to be all right? Is it going to be safe? Because things like that can go in a second, but they don\u2019t get replaced overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n

A firefighter spoke to Swift about seeing the birds flee the fire and how they would return to a scorched forest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pain of knowing that\u2019s their home and we can\u2019t stop it … It is heartbreaking,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

\"AA National Park volunteer firefighter working to help contain the blaze.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the fire chief got a call at 8am asking if her crew was good to go again, having finished at the fire ground at 3.30am that same morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, yeah, they\u2019re keen to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crew spent 13 hours at the airstrip filling the five fixed-wing aircraft with water. The planes had worked alongside 12 helicopters to attack the fire from the air.<\/p>\n

\" One of the aircraft used to attack the fire by air.<\/p>\n

Swift said two pumps pulled water from a stream into a portable dam that could hold 25,000 litres. Water from the dam was pumped into the fire truck then run down two hoses used for the aircraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was actually really quite exciting work because the planes are coming in right on each other\u2019s tails … They\u2019re touching down 10 or 20 seconds behind the next one at times.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would take a minute and half for the firefighters to run in under a plane, attach a hose, flick the water on and then fill the plane.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really hot, sunny day and every time the planes took off, they\u2019d be kicking back the dirt and the draft and we\u2019re smelling kerosene,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut nobody wanted to go home … we were all a team and this is our area.\u201d<\/p>\n

In view were the massive plumes of smoke billowing out of the park.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou see it burning away and you\u2019re thinking, \u2018oh I hope we\u2019re making a difference\u2019,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen at night you see it glowing and you\u2019re like, \u2018oh, we did all that work today and look how big the glow is\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NationalNational Park firefighters take a rest during a long day. They watch as the fire continues to burn.<\/p>\n

The firefighters had been running on adrenaline but as the blaze persisted<\/a>, fatigue set in.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d take a break and sit down and it was like, whoa. It really hits you how tired you are, especially if people only got a couple of hours\u2019 sleep,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut nobody wanted to go home, even though everyone was tired.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Park crew had been heartened by the overwhelming messages of support from the community. People had even offered to drop off baking or had asked about joining the brigade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt so supported by the community,\u201d Swift said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four National Park volunteer firefighters responded quickly but the blaze was already bigger than a football pitch and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[59677,4996,50960,3937,124,39513,1872,2079,7572,1888,88316,3011,71,305,88315,3556,111,43,139,69,8143,24178,312,11208,1361,684,46029,88317,3608,6730],"class_list":["post-127251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-armageddon","tag-blaze","tag-brigade","tag-chief","tag-could","tag-devastation","tag-face","tag-fire","tag-firefighters","tag-first","tag-foreseen","tag-four","tag-from","tag-have","tag-marilla","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-park","tag-recall","tag-says","tag-swift","tag-that","tag-there","tag-tongariro","tag-unravel","tag-were","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}