Pigeon Valley Fire: Time to scarper — with what?

When the time comes to flee, what do you grab?

With flames licking the tips of towering pine trees and galloping across tinder-dry paddocks, the things you hold dearest become starkly clear. Your loved ones, of course,
and then what? There's only so much you can fit in the boot of your car, or in the canopy of the trailer hitched behind the ute.

Pets: cats, dogs, turtles, the jittery little guys are tucked in the back, along with some spare clothes — a few days' worth? — some linen, muesli bars, a few apples, loo rolls, and faded family albums.

It was late on Tuesday night — after the fire began up picturesque Pigeon Valley, 30km south of Nelson — when David Vanstone and Fiona Thompson (pictured left) started thinking they should evacuate their 40ha Malling Rd farm.

The first plumes of smoke "looked like an atomic bomb going off", Thompson said. "It was like a big mushroom. It was quite spectacular, from a distance."

How close the Nelson fire got to a property. Photo / Tim Cuff

They moved deer into another paddock and put cattle close to a road they thought was a lesser fire danger.

"We were more concerned with getting our personal possessions of a lifetime out of the house," Vanstone admitted. "It was a mad 20-30 minutes. We filled the car and truck and ute and we were off."

On the next road over, agricultural contractor Steve German was wondering how his livestock were faring.

He'd just moved them up to nearby Redwood Valley to chomp some tall grass that was clearly becoming a fire risk.

Hundreds evacuated in Tasman district as forest fires burn near Nelson Richmond, New Zealand. Photo / Evan Barnes

But German couldn't get up to move his stock before he had to leave.

It was a sorry sight the next day.

The inferno had ripped through the paddock where his 80 breeding ewes and 13 cows and calves were.

"It was pretty horrible, to say the least," he said.

A total of 61 ewes had to be put down. He has 14 home alive and recovering, but says more might yet have to be euthanised from burn injuries.

In a lucky stroke, all of the cattle stock survived.