Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Susan Edmonds<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A large amount of smoke can be seen at Whang\u0101rei Heads. A resident in the area says it is smoky.<\/p>\n Another resident said the fire was scary and bigger than she had seen in previous years.<\/p>\n The resident, who did not want to be named, lives about a kilometre from the fire.<\/p>\n She said she could see flames and several helicopters pouring buckets of water onto the fire.<\/p>\n They have had bush fires previously, she said, but not at the scale she has seen today.<\/p>\n Smoke at Whang\u0101rei Heads from a vegetation fire can be seen from the water.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0Supplied \/ Diane Green<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ryan Houbar lives near Whang\u0101rei’s port and said the smoke from the fire had been drifting over from across the harbour and was visible from where he was at Port Nikau.<\/p>\n “There’s this big plume of smoke coming off it and it’s coming down through where we are down at the port and it looks like quite a large fire. We can definitely smell it all down here and it’s getting pretty hazy down here.”<\/p>\n The weather has been mostly dry for a couple of weeks, with all but a few instances of light showers, he said.<\/p>\n Paul Doherty, a church deacon in Onerahi, said he was one of about a dozen people at a lookout at the end of the Whang\u0101rei Airport runway.<\/p>\n From there they could look directly across the water to the fire at Waikaraka.<\/p>\n He could see several helicopters at work, scooping water from the harbour and dumping it on the fire.<\/p>\n “There’s smoke billowing all across the airport, and down the other side of the harbour towards Oakleigh. It seems to be less intense than it was, which is a good sign.”<\/p>\n Through the haze he could see a number of homes on the hillside but they did not appear to be in immediate danger.<\/p>\n Dry, breezy weather in Northland is largely set to continue over the next 24 hours.<\/p>\n Metservice meteorologist Mmathapelo Makgabutlane says the wind around Whang\u0101rei Heads will ease Thursday afternoon, but pick up again on Friday.<\/p>\n While there was a chance of a shower on Friday, she said it likely won’t be enough to put a fire out.<\/p>\n Whang\u0101rei Airport remains open and airport duty manager Gareth Worswick said the fire was close, but an easterly wind was blowing the smoke away from the runway so visibility remained good.<\/p>\n The Whang\u0101rei District Council said Whang\u0101rei Heads Road had reopened but with a 30km\/h speed limit near the Beach Road intersection at Onerahi.<\/p>\n Motorists were advised to drive with caution, be prepared for smoke, and give way to emergency vehicles.<\/p>\n People wanting to take another route to Whang\u0101rei Heads can use Mount Tiger Road.<\/p>\n Whang\u0101rei Heads Road was closed earlier this afternoon at Waikaraka, between Onerahi and Tamaterau.<\/p>\n More to come… A large vegetation fire in Whang\u0101rei Heads in Northland has triggered Fire and Emergency response. Evacuations are underway for a number of homes nearby. Crews were called shortly after 2pm Thursday to the blaze on Whang\u0101rei Heads Road between Onerahi and Tamaterau. Ten trucks and four helicopters are in attendance. Fire and Emergency’s Northland District […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12294,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12292\/revisions\/12294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
Weather outlook<\/h3>\n
Road reopens<\/h3>\n
\n<\/i><\/b>~RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"