A large grass fire that forced the evacuation of homes in Central Otago has been contained.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency NZ crews were called to the blaze about 3.30pm yesterday in the Springvale area near Clyde.<\/p>\n
In a statement last night, incident controller Nic McQuillan said 21 fire trucks and support vehicles responded and crews worked hard to save homes from the fast-moving blaze.<\/p>\n
Firefighters were supported by four helicopters and managed to “contain and largely suppress” the blaze by nightfall.<\/p>\n
Mr McQuillan said residents of most of the properties evacuated had been allowed to return home. Police had assisted in helping people move out of their homes.<\/p>\n
However, residents of a small number of properties to the west of McArthur Rd were not yet able to return to their homes.<\/p>\n
RNZ earlier reported that residents of at least eight properties had been affected.<\/p>\n
One shed had been destroyed and flames scorched the exterior of one house. About 20ha had been burned on both sides of Springvale Rd, which remained closed tonight.<\/p>\n
“As of 8pm, the helicopters had been stood down and some of the fire crews were being released,” Mr McQuillan said last night.<\/p>\n
“Multiple crews will be working until dark with one crew staying on the fire ground overnight, patrolling in case of flare-ups.<\/p>\n
“Additional crews will return tomorrow to extinguish some deep-seated areas of fire.”<\/p>\n
A specialist tree assessor was identifying and felling several dangerous trees that had been damaged. That work would ensure the safety of firefighters and residents.<\/p>\n
Earlier, a lot of smoke was drifting towards Alexandra and people in the vicinity were told to stay inside with windows closed.<\/p>\n
A resident of Springvale Rd, close to McArthur Rd, told the\u00a0Otago Daily Times\u00a0at about 6pm there was a lot of smoke and people were leaving the area. The wind had been strong throughout the day. \u2014 Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A large grass fire that forced the evacuation of homes in Central Otago has been contained. Fire and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-302164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302164","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=302164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}