{"id":640783,"date":"2026-10-25T10:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T10:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/640783\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T10:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T10:24:11","slug":"six-helicopters-battle-southland-fire-threatening-two-comms-towers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/640783\/","title":{"rendered":"Six helicopters battle Southland fire threatening two comms towers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six helicopters are racing to protect two telecommunications towers from a large vegetation fire in northern Southland this evening with severe gales forecast to batter the region from tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency NZ was first called to the blaze on Mount Hamilton near Centre Hill, east of Te Anau, at around 3.37pm on Sunday. A seventh aircraft is directing the air attack from above.<\/p>\n

A Fire and Emergency spokesperson said the fire posed no immediate danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no risk to the public at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fire<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency NZ was first called to the blaze on Mount Hamilton near Centre Hill, east of Te Anau, at around 4pm on Sunday. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n

No firefighters are tackling the blaze on the ground, because the land is hard to reach. Fire and Emergency crews are in the Centre Hill area monitoring the response.<\/p>\n

The fire is burning through short grass rather than scrub, and is not spreading quickly. The spokesperson said strong winds were making it hard to contain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key focus is to protect the telecommunications towers nearby.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wind is expected to get worse tomorrow<\/a>, with Southland among several areas under an orange-level strong wind warning from 8am to 8pm. Severe northwesterly gales gusting up to 120km\/h in exposed places are forecast.<\/p>\n

Centre Hill is a rural area west of Mossburn, on the state highway to Te Anau.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six helicopters are racing to protect two telecommunications towers from a large vegetation fire in northern Southland this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,15488,40,38,41,39,4143],"class_list":["post-640783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-southland","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640783","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=640783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}