Firefighters' hunger foiled as pie hits hot spot

Name: Otago firefighters' hunger foiled as pies hit hot spot
Uploaded: 2015-10-13T09:37:20+13:00
Duration: 109 s
Description: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so they say. But what about when life gives you 100ha fires? ''Fire pies,'' rural firefighter Will McBeth said. After a hard morning turning over a scorched hillside near Dunback with shovels and a digger, the firefighters of the Glenorchy Volunteer Rural Fire Force tucked into a pastry-lined lunch cooked in the hot earth. Source: ODT

By Timothy Brown

Otago Daily Times·

12 Oct, 2015 06:59 PMQuick Read

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so they say. But what about when life gives you 100ha fires? ''Fire pies,'' rural firefighter Will McBeth said. After a hard morning turning over a scorched hillside near Dunback with shovels and a digger, the firefighters of the Glenorchy Volunteer Rural Fire Force tucked into a pastry-lined lunch cooked in the hot earth. Source: ODT

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, so they say. But what about when life gives you 100ha fires?

"Fire pies," rural firefighter Will McBeth said.

After a hard morning turning over a scorched hillside near Dunback with shovels and a digger, the firefighters of the Glenorchy Volunteer Rural Fire Force tucked into a pastry-lined lunch cooked in the hot earth.

Otago Rural Fire Authority deputy principal rural fire officer Kerry O'Neill said he introduced the cooking method to his charges after learning it from United States firefighters this year.

US crews enjoyed a warm lunch every day courtesy of the very fires they were fighting.

"They would take their burritos, or whatever they were eating, wrap it in tinfoil and put it into an ash pit or hot spot and there's your lunch," he said.

Mr O'Neill adapted the method to the classic Kiwi pie.

But did it taste good? "Yeah, of course," he said.

"We are hungry."

Mr McBeth, who admitted "that's the first fire pie", agreed it was the perfect lunch on an empty stomach.

"Beautiful," he said.

"Nature's oven."