{"id":470563,"date":"2026-06-10T17:27:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/470563\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:27:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:27:34","slug":"cops-identify-suspects-in-suspicious-oamaru-school-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/470563\/","title":{"rendered":"Cops identify suspects in ‘suspicious’ Oamaru school fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oamaru police are treating a spectacular fire which ripped through trees at Waitaki Boys’ High School as suspicious.<\/p>\n

Sergeant Blair Wilkinson said they had identified “several individuals” to be spoken to as part of inquiries.<\/p>\n

\"Fire<\/p>\n

Fire rages in the treeline near sports fields at Waitaki Boy’s High School. PHOTO: NIC DUFF<\/p>\n

A Fire and Emergency New Zealand fire investigator was at the scene yesterday.<\/p>\n

The fire had previously been treated as “unexplained”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

About 200m of trees along the end of the school’s Don Field was engulfed in flames yesterday.<\/p>\n

Waitaki Boys’ High School rector Darryl Paterson said he was relieved no-one was hurt and that there was \u201cno major damage\u201d to any major school assets, in particular the caretaker’s house which was \u201cvery close to the fire\u201d.<\/p>\n

The fire had severely damaged the pine hedge on the eastern boundary of Don Field.<\/p>\n

A Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokesman said crews responded to a call just before 9am.<\/p>\n

Four fire trucks were on the scene with all firefighters wearing breathing apparatus.<\/p>\n

nic.duff@odt.co.nz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oamaru police are treating a spectacular fire which ripped through trees at Waitaki Boys’ High School as suspicious.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-470563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470563","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=470563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}