The damage left behind by a fire in a patch of bamboo in Kowhai Park on the bank of the Whanganui River. Photo / Bevan Conley
The damage left behind by a fire in a patch of bamboo in Kowhai Park on the bank of the Whanganui River. Photo / Bevan Conley
A fire that destroyed a patch of bamboo in Whanganui’s Kowhai Park is being investigated as suspicious.
Whanganui Fire Station was alerted to the fire in the James McGregor Arboretum area of the park around 1.15pm on Tuesday.
The fire burned its way through a 20 by 30-metre patch of bamboo near the bank of the Whanganui River.
After the initial fire was extinguished around 4pm, a member of the public alerted a rural volunteer fire crew still at the scene of a second fire which had ignited further up the riverbank.
“It does bring to mind, when you’ve got two different sets of fire and no obvious cause of ignition, a bit of a concern [as to whether] someone is igniting them,” senior station officer Craig Gardiner said.
Gardiner said bamboo was combustible due to it being hollow and the plant’s stalks having thick, extremely dry bases.
“Even during winter, that stuff will burn readily because the water doesn’t seem to penetrate the thickness of the base and it remains dry,” he said.
Bamboo plants also hold a lot of air in between their stalks which expands when it heats up, meaning the bamboo pops and bangs as it burns.
“People were alerted to [the fire] more by noise than they were about actual visuals - it was making a hell of a racket,” he said.
The combustibility of bamboo and high winds in the city helped the fire grow quickly. Photo / Steve Carle
High winds at the time of the fire also helped fan the flames and let the fire grow quickly.
MetService meteorologist Stephen Glassey said the strongest wind in Whanganui on Tuesday was a 70km/h gust recorded around 9am at Whanganui Airport, but overall, winds stayed fairly strong throughout the day.
The mean wind speed for the city was around 37km/h, just below MetService’s threshold for average wind to be classified as strong.
“It’s sort of hovering on that strong threshold, but for an average person in the public, it probably feels strong anyway,” Glassey said.
Gardiner said one Whanganui Fire Station crew initially responded to the blaze but struggled to gain access to the fire and establish a water supply due to it being on a piece of land between the Matarawa Stream and Whanganui River.
Crews elected to pump from the stream directly before calling for more assistance.
“When they realised they were having access difficulties and the nature of the fire [meant it was] growing, they called for more resources.”
Fire crews had difficulties reaching the blaze and securing a steady water supply. Photo / Steve Carle
Two more crews and a tanker arrived at the scene, with a steady water supply eventually established from the tanker, the stream and a water main on Anzac Pde around 150m away from the fire.
The crews also had help in establishing the water supply from two bystanders.
“We had a member of the public and a rural firefighter who was just passing help our staff establish that water supply,” Gardiner said.
Whanganui station crews then had the fire under control by 2.12pm, and after it was extinguished, they handed the scene over to a rural volunteer crew just after 3pm.
“Because of the nature, it’s very dry under the bamboo, and [due to] the high winds that persisted, we wanted to make sure we didn’t get a reignition.”
The volunteers stayed on-site and turned over the area by dousing hotspots.
People also called into the station concerned some of the historic ornamental trees in the park had been damaged by the blaze, but Gardiner said they were unharmed.
However, crews were assessing whether to fell a pine tree which had been damaged, with the potential danger of limbs falling.
Finn Williams is a multimedia journalist for the Whanganui Chronicle. He joined the Chronicle in early 2022 and regularly covers stories about business, events and emergencies. He also enjoys writing opinion columns on whatever interests him.
