Last month's massive wildfire on Chatham Island that cost about a million dollars to extinguish is now thought to have been deliberately lit and the police are investigating.
Images taken from a Royal New Zealand C-130 of a bush fire on the Chatham Islands. The images were taken in order to inform New Zealand Fire And Emergency of what will be required to subdue the blaze. Photo: Supplied / New Zealand Defence Force
The fire broke out at the start of February and burnt through 2500ha of vegetation before being put out.
More than 100 crew from Pumiceland, Taranaki, Wanganui and the Wellington region, as well as two helicopters, worked on the wild fire over the last month.
Fire and Emergency's Principal Rural Fire Officer, Craig Cottrill, told RNZ News a fire investigator had found there were multiple ignition points for the blaze near a four wheel drive track.
Mr Cottrill said it cost more than $1m to fight the fire and significant damage had been done to the natural landscape on the island.
Looking for clues in the fire scorched landscape. Photo: Supplied
Over 100 crew from Pumiceland, Taranaki, Wanganui and the Wellington region, as well as two helicopters, worked on the wild fire over the last month.
"If the police investigation proves that somebody deliberately lit the fire - that's a lot of money to spend on something that shouldn't have happened," he said.
"It threatened a lot of biodiversity out there and now there's a big ugly black scar right across the southern part of the island."
Mr Cottrill said that if someone did deliberately light the fire they should be held accountable, and the police were arranging to send an investigator to the island.
Chatham Island is part of the Chatham Islands archipelago in the Pacific, about 800km east of the South Island.
About 600 people live on two of the 10 islands that make up the Chathams and rely on conservation, tourism, farming and fishing.
