Fire-starter convicted the second time around

The fire ignited vegetation on a nearby cliff and swept up the side of a historic pā at Rangihoua Heritage Park. Photo / supplied

A 27-year-old man who was discharged without conviction after starting a fire in a historic Bay of Islands reserve with a home-made bomb in 2019 has now been convicted, after the High Court upheld a police appeal.

The court ordered that Ryan Andrew Moffat be re-sentenced, having found that the sentencing judge erred in concluding from the available evidence that his offending was not relatively serious.

Moffat appeared before the District Court at Kaikohe and was sentenced to 200 hours' community work, and ordered to pay Fire and Emergency NZ $15,000 towards its costs. Fighting the fire had cost $24,000.

Moffat had been charged with recklessly and without claim of right damaging by means of an explosive an area of bush of scrub, police claiming that he buried the device, and containers of petrol, on a beach on the Purerua Peninsula, then went up a hill with two friends to watch as he detonated the bomb using a firing box in January 2019.

The resulting fire ignited vegetation on a nearby cliff and swept up the side of a historic pā at Rangihoua Heritage Park, the site of New Zealand's first European settlement.

About 30 firefighters with seven appliances responded to the blaze, a helicopter finishing the job the next morning.

Moffat had told the court that he had not believed he was risking starting a fire, so he could not be criminally liable for arson. If he had thought there was a risk he would have buried the bomb 50 metres further down the beach.

He had added the petrol to get a bigger bang, and because it was cheaper than solid explosives, not because he wanted to start a fire.

Police argued that Moffat's friends had alerted him to the bomb's proximity to cliffside vegetation, and to get to the beach he had driven or walked past at least half a dozen "No Fire" signs.

Police appealed the District Court's decision to discharge him without conviction on the grounds that the sentencing judge erred in his assessment of the gravity of the offending by overlooking relevant considerations.

They claimed that the judge had overlooked that Moffat was put on notice by his associates that the hole he had dug and into which he put the explosive device was too close to vegetation, that there was a total fire ban in place at the relevant time, and that he was familiar with and held pyrotechnic certification and experience.

Further, the sentencing judge erred in his assessment of the consequences of a conviction on Moffat's job, his family business, ability to travel and obtain mortgages, which were not supported by available evidence.

"Mr Moffat's actions were more than naïve as the judge suggested. They were also much more than 'a stupid thing to do', again as the judge suggested," Justice Edwin Wylie noted in his judgment.

The area around Marsden Cross is known for its large North Island brown kiwi population, a witness to the fire reporting that kiwi were heard "screaming" as flames swept up the hillside, but an inspection by DoC rangers found no dead birds or fire-damaged nests. A dead kiwi was subsequently found, but DoC doubted that it had succumbed to the fire.