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A Fury of Gale, Fire and Cloudburst

The Opunake-Eltham coach service was again disrupted on Friday, 18 March 1904, when the greater part of the route between Opunake and Kaponga was swept by bush fires brought raging through by a furious gale. On 14 August 1903 there had been one man's tragedy, of which news went out quickly by rider and telegraph line, so that the Star got the gist of the story to its readers that evening. From before daylight on Friday, 18 March 1904, it was everyone's story over a great swathe of country stretching for about 15 miles on either side of Eltham Road, with further outbreaks to the north of Opunake as far as Pungarehu. But that evening's Star seemed
scarcely aware of the drama, the only mention being two short paragraphs from ‘Our Own’ and three lines from Te Kiri's ‘Our Own’. Settlers fighting for their lives and property in blinding smoke had no time to dispatch reports, and in any case telegraph news was being blacked out by the fire bringing down the lines along Eltham Road. Even next day the Star had
only three short paragraphs of sketchy reports. But on Monday, 21 March, the extent of the disaster was unfolded under a tier of headlines:

FRIDAY'S GALE
EXTENSIVE BUSH FIRES
ABOUT 100,000 ACRES AFFECTED
GREAT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY
EXCITING EXPERIENCES
A PHENOMENAL RAINFALL
(By Our Special Reporter)

The rush of fire, the violence of the gale, the density of the smoke, and the suffocating atmosphere that prevailed on Friday last, will cause the day to be long remembered. Many settlers over a wide extent of countryside were compelled to neglect their daily milking to fight the flames that threatened wholesale destruction as they were forced along at a terrific pace by a furious gale.

The conflagration did not spread from one starting point. The fire that wrought so much havoc at Lower Rowan road (Kaponga) came from a different quarter to that which proved so terrible in the upper portion of that thoroughfare. Again there was no connection between the outbreak to the north of Opunake—about Rahotu and Pungarehu—and that which had its source in the Mountain Reserve. All that was required was an ember in an old rata log. This the wind would fan into a terrific blast, and spread the red-hot ashes broadcast to further the work of desolation.

We will concentrate our attention on the eastern end of the scene, where the fires swept across a large part of the western stretch of Kaponga's district. The cause of the disaster was a ‘furious northerly gale’, which started on the Thursday and continued until late on Friday, culminating in a cloudburst. The gale must have had a north-easterly inclination as the fires page 321 originating on Rowan Road spread from there towards Opunake, not eastwards towards Kaponga. One needs to take account of the flow of settlement to make sense of the location of the fires. The whole district will have been swept by the gale, but no fires were reported around Kaponga or to its east, whereas, as we saw in Chapter 4, the bush fires of the 1890s swept repeatedly along Palmer Road, and also at times threatened the township itself. In these older settled areas stumping and logging-up were now well advanced, and much of the land will have been in mature pasture. But in the later settled west of the district the autumn days will have seen a great deal of chopping, blasting and burning of stumps and logs, including the firing of the dry, standing skeleton of many a great rata. It was these vestiges of the forest that the gale whipped into roaring flames and spread abroad both through the dry grass and by means of fragments whirled through the air. Under the heading ‘A Terrible Day’ the reporter told how milkers rising before dawn on the Friday found something more urgent than their milking to attend to:

Towards the mountain could be seen huge pine trees flaring like giant torches and giving off strips of blazing material that were hurled tremendous distances by the hurricane. Now and then these merciless messengers would light on other pines or on some huge grub-punctured rata, whose innumerable flues would greedily suck up the flames, and these in turn blazed up, only to be dissolved by the rushing wind and carried on to make fresh fiery conquests. As the morning advanced the flames swept on, enveloping the farms in quick succession with heavy suffocating smoke. An organised attempt to check the conflagration was out of the question; the only thing that remained was for each to save his own homestead if possible.

Families quickly formed themselves into bucket brigades, and all available water supplies were soon taxed to the utmost. The fire fighters acted strictly on the defensive. As the smoke thickened it was impossible to see at a greater distance than a few yards, and houses had to be regularly and carefully reconnoitred to extinguish as soon as they fell the sparks that dropped like hail. When a shed, a fence, or a haystack was seen to catch the brigades rushed to the place, and the incipient conflagration was suppressed. Temporarily blinded by the heat and smoke, the victors retired to press their aching eyeballs and prepare for a defence in another direction. The horror of the situation was increased by the dreadful uncertainty as to how one's neighbours were faring. Throughout the long day until late in the afternoon there was no period of rest from the anxious task.

We will illustrate the day's long struggle with some of the happenings along Rowan Road and at Riverlea. The strength of the gale can be seen in the way in which the flames outwitted the defence strategies that had developed over the years. To protect their homes many settlers surrounded them with a couple of chains of ploughed land, planted with potatoes, winter root crops &c. Allan Grace and W. J. Barleyman were two Rowan page 322 Road settlers who had taken this precaution. But Grace found that this day a ploughed paddock seven chains wide was no protection. Thousands of coals of living fire were swept right across it to set fire to the fences beyond. Barleyman's defences included a four-acre crop of rape, then four inches high. Every plant was blown out by the roots. Meanwhile the gale strewed the defensive zone with inflammable materials, hay, shingles torn from shed roofs, rubbish from the wild. After long hours of successful struggle Barleyman began taking serious losses around 2pm.

There was no burning tree within seven chains of the house, but big sparks fell in showers, and the wind with cyclonic force drove scorching pellets with destructive force against all the buildings. In the midst of it all a fiery flake of rotten rimu was lodged close by. Mr Barleyman turned for a bucket of water, but at that moment a sudden gust of wind swished the devilish torch beneath his new and very fine house. Not to be defeated without another effort, Mr Barleyman seized a flour-bag, and crawling below the building promptly smothered the dangerous blaze. Just then Mrs Barleyman called out that the haystacks were going, and before anything could be done 35 tons of hay was doomed. Then the stable and cowsheds caught alight, and the buildings, which contained a quantity of grass seeds, harness, tools, etc., were soon levelled to the ground. To say nothing of about 50 acres of grass, the value of the property that was burnt was about £400.

Other losses along the road included firewood and fencing by Grace and haystacks by Doyle and Voullaire. When a valuable haystack in one of Voullaire's paddocks came under threat, with the water supply exhausted, Voullaire and Allan Grace were able to save it with a dowsing of skim milk—an expedient also reported on elsewhere. In upper Rowan Road D. Stringer began taking losses about 3pm, with a recently erected double loft shed, 15 tons of oaten and clover hay, outhouses, tools, fencing, and a milk cart going up in flames. His house and another shed were frequently menaced, but he managed to save them. Throughout the fire district settlers took similar losses of sheds, haystacks and fencing. Several whares were also lost, but it appears that all substantial homes were successfully defended. Beside the struggles on the farms there were stern battles for other establishments, such as Parkes and Brooker's sawmill at Awatuna, a creamery on
Skeet Road and the social hall at Te Kiri.

Early on women and children, and others not able to fight the flames, abandoned their threatened homes for safer shelter, with bedding and valuables (some stowed in milk cans) loaded onto their vehicles. A few made their way to Kaponga. Others took refuge at Riverlea, in the dairy factory and in W. K. Howitt's store, with caches of valuables stored in Walker's new blacksmith's shop. With the defenders wilting with exhaustion and everything becoming increasingly desiccated by the fiery gale, there could well have been a second flood of refugees from burnt-out homesteads had not page 323 everything been dramatically changed late in the afternoon by the sudden cloudburst.

The face of the country was entirely changed by the deluge. In a few minutes the metalled roads had angry streams rushing along either side… Streamlets became creeks, creeks rivers, and rivers rushing torrents. In the paddocks hundreds of miniature lakes were formed, into which burning logs fell with wild hisses. Never before in the memory of settlers had such a downpour occurred. The Kapuni river, subject though it be to sudden freshes, is generally an innocent enough stream, but on Friday night it whirled along violently as if daring the wayfarer to effect a crossing by its fords. Kelly's Creek rose three feet higher than it had ever been known to do before, and was for a time an insuperable bar to vehicular traffic along the Eltham-Opunake road. The Mangawhero river became choked with logs at the crossing where Mr Kidd lost his life, and the coachdriver was compelled to leave the conveyance on the Opunake side and bring the mails across on horseback. Elliott's creek rose rapidly and acquiring torrential force washed the Skeet road bridge away bodily, leaving the wreck heaped up against the bank several chains away. Having escaped the fire the country appeared on the verge of being flooded, but, the flames being extinguished, the rain ceased as suddenly as it began.

Worn out by their endeavours some of the defenders now made their way into Kaponga as drenched refugees. Others took news of the successful defence of their homes to the women and children now bedding down in the Riverlea store and factory. As night fell the fires gave way only slowly to the deluge.

… the country bore a striking resemblance to a huge city when gaily illuminated on some festive occasion; looked at by those the fire encircled, the spectacle was awe-inspiring. Thousands of trees, each a living coal from its base to the top, stood out glowing against an inky sky. One after another of these forest giants would fall with a tremendous crash, while from its ruins myriads of sparks would rise upwards and disappear in black space. Only gradually did the tropical rain gain the mastery over the giant embers— towards dawn on Saturday morning …

This episode highlights the fact that into the 20th century our district remained ‘bush’ and ‘frontier’. After March 1904 there were still years of bush fires ahead. In mid-March 1907 the settlers of Rowan Road and Riverlea were again hard pressed by wind-driven bush fires that raged for several days before finally burning out. Beginning on 9 February 1908 a ‘fierce and destructive’ bush fire raged for about 10 days through a strip of country along and south of Opunake Road, beginning north of Awatuna and spreading eastward through Makaka and Rowan to reach the upper Manaia Road (i.e. somewhat to the north of the March 1904 blaze). In his first letter for 1910 ‘Our Own’ told of a heavy downpour on New Year's Eve morning putting a damper on bush fires that had been devastating ‘the page 324 country between us and the mountain, very close to the town’. On 2 April 1913 Rowan's ‘Our Own’ reported gales spreading bush fires in the district, the hall in danger, heavy losses of haystacks, and C. Hill's milking shed and plant destroyed. ‘The bush’ still differed from the coastal open country in vital ways. For decades now the homes and gardens, pastures and crops, flocks and herds of these southern neighbours had been sheltered from the recurrent gales by their shelter belts of trees and well-established boxthorn hedges. And when a summer or autumn turned dry their worries were trivial compared with those of ‘the bush’.