{"id":16131,"date":"2025-12-24T05:43:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16131"},"modified":"2025-12-24T05:43:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T16:43:41","slug":"firefighting-resumes-at-scrub-blaze-in-fernhill-hastings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=16131","title":{"rendered":"Firefighting resumes at scrub blaze in Fernhill, Hastings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fire crews are battling to control a\u00a0scrub blaze that broke out near Hastings<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday, leaving one person hospitalised and multiple buildings destroyed.<\/p>\n

The fire in Fernhill – between the township and the Ngaruroro River bridge – also forced people living in and around the Farmhouse Lodge accommodation from their homes.<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency Assistant Commander Jason Hill said crews had been patrolling the fire overnight, and it was contained, but firefighting would resume on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

“Crews will be looking to bring the fire to a point where it’s 100 percent controlled, so that means there is no chance of it burning outside of the containment lines, whether the wind picks up or not,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We still have multiple pockets of fire burning within the perimeter.”<\/p>\n

A fire investigator would also begin looking into the cause of the fire, said Hill.<\/p>\n

He said two homes, multiple sheds and some machinery were completely destroyed.<\/p>\n

When crews arrived, flames fanned by strong winds were running up the hill, threatening multiple buildings, Hill said.<\/p>\n

Firefighting efforts were hampered by gusts of up to 90 km\/h, which meant they could not call on helicopters, leaving ground crews to tackle it.<\/p>\n

Dawson Bliss owns Farmhouse Lodge and the fire was burning on his property, he said.<\/p>\n

A tenant alerted him to smoke billowing up the hill and when he went to investigate, it appeared an old bus was on fire on flat land near the Ngaruroro river.<\/p>\n

“I rushed down there and got close to it and had extinguishers and so forth, but it was just too ablaze to try and get close enough,” he said.<\/p>\n

Bliss did not know when he and his tenants would be able to return to the property.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday he told RNZ he was feeling okay, but “later on it might be worse, when we take stock of the situation”.<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency said Civil Defence had helped evacuees to find a place to stay overnight.<\/p>\n

Hastings Mayor Wendy Schollum said it was distressing for those impacted by the fire – and it was a stark reminder of how dangerous the region’s hot, windy summers could be.<\/p>\n

Schollum and Hill urged people to take\u00a0fire bans<\/a>\u00a0seriously.<\/p>\n

rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fire crews are battling to control a\u00a0scrub blaze that broke out near Hastings\u00a0on Tuesday, leaving one person hospitalised and multiple buildings destroyed. The fire in Fernhill – between the township and the Ngaruroro River bridge – also forced people living in and around the Farmhouse Lodge accommodation from their homes. Fire and Emergency Assistant Commander […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16131","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=16131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16133,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16131\/revisions\/16133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}