February 18, 2009

The weekend rain has aided the efforts of those still working to secure a fire zone at Opoutama, in northern Hawke's Bay.
It has been more than two weeks since a fire ripped through dry grassland and pine trees at the popular holiday spot, destroying one home and damaging other buildings.
Department of Conservation's (DoC) incident controller at the fire, Malcolm Smith, said the last of the volunteer fire crews finished their work on Thursday.
'The forecast looked pretty good for us going into the weekend and we had about 13mm of rain and we had more rain last evening,' Mr Smith said.
'We had an infra-red scan of the area yesterday which revealed no hot spots but we will wait for another 10 days or two weeks to do another scan, just to make sure.'
Mr Smith said the fire, which began on February 1 and burnt through deep-rooted pine trees, could still be burning underground.
'We are pretty comfortable the fire has been dealt to but need to keep an eye on it,' he said.
This week DoC staff were checking off equipment used by various crews on the fire to make sure it was all sent back to the owners. At the height of the fire, 100 firefighters and seven helicopters were working on the blaze.
Mr Smith said there was still fire fuel around the district and a change in weather, to hot north-west winds, could put them 'back to square one'.
'We really still need some substantial rain to come over,' he said.