Northern Fire Communications shift manager Lauren Sika said crews left the scene about 6.40pm. <\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency would monitor hot spots overnight, and firefighters would likely return in the morning.<\/p>\n
Broadlands Rd and SH1 between Centennial and Broadlands have reopened, police and NZTA confirmed in updates this evening.<\/p>\n
They were earlier closed as firefighters worked to bring the blaze under control, with windy and dry conditions in the area.<\/p>\n
In a statement, police thanked the public for their patience while emergency services were working at the scene.<\/p>\n
Witness: \u2018It\u2019s pretty bad\u2019<\/p>\n
A witness at the scene earlier told NZME a vegetation fire was burning dangerously close to commercial properties, with high winds driving the blaze. <\/p>\n
A Hog Haulage employee said they had been evacuated as the fire burned beside their building on State Highway 1. <\/p>\n
The employee said the fire was \u201cright beside\u201d the back of the buildings and staff were concerned one of them could catch fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty bad. Yeah, it\u2019s a bad fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the fire had spread quickly and about half a dozen fire trucks were at the scene, with roads closed and emergency crews working in the area.<\/p>\n
A witness at the scene said the main highway was also now closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fire has nearly jumped the state highway; multiple fire appliances in attendance; extreme high winds.\u201d<\/p>\n
One business has been evacuated following the vegetation fire in Taup\u014d. Photo \/ Cameron Avery<\/p>\n
Ross White Panel and Paint co-owner Sonja Hunter said staff were particularly concerned because the business had gas bottles near its spray booth.<\/p>\n
Staff moved their cars away as a precaution after the fire broke out about 30 to 40 metres from the building, on the other side of a fence line.<\/p>\n
Hunter said the fire appeared to be burning through trees between the business and the golf course and looked to have been started by a fallen power line.<\/p>\n
She said the wind was pushing the smoke away from the business but feared it could be at greater risk if the wind changed direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Fire Communications shift manager Lauren Sika said crews left the scene about 6.40pm. Fire and Emergency would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,11730,138,10166,20106,36662,44413,2079,679,305,42,2959,3242,3180,43,20593,20383,1852,1961,40,38,41,39,23440,5977,18980],"class_list":["post-586122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-afternoon","tag-business","tag-businesses","tag-drove","tag-evacuate","tag-fastmoving","tag-fire","tag-forced","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-high","tag-large","tag-near","tag-news","tag-reopened","tag-roads","tag-taup","tag-this","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-vegetation","tag-which","tag-winds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586122","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=586122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}