Photo: Supplied / Ōhau Conservation Trust
Close to 1000 trees were planted near the Lake Ōhau alpine village this weekend in an event to honour the firefighters who fought the wildfire that destroyed or damaged roughly half of the village in 2020.
The blaze engulfed more than 5000 hectares of land, and destroyed nearly 50 properties.
Villagers have been creating a new native forest where a plantation forest was destroyed.
The Ōhau Conservation Trust received a grant from the Matariki Tu Rākau fund which was part of the government's One Billion Trees programme, that was being used to plant an area to celebrate the firefighters, along with two plaques to list the 34 brigades that fought the blaze.
More than 5000 hectares of land was destroyed in the fire. Photo: Supplied / Ōhau Conservation Trust
Trust chairperson Viv Smith-Campbell says it was a special event, with attendees including representatives from the Twizel and Omarama fire brigades.
"A very special guest was Graeme Still who was our fire controller at the time of the wildfire. Graeme has a really close relationship with people from the village, he was just wonderful to us during that time of uncertainty," she said.
"We were astounded by how many plants were planted today, 920 plants. With Sundays planting we've got over 5000 plants in there over three years."
Nearly 1000 trees were planted at the weekend. Photo: Supplied / Ōhau Conservation Trust
Planting a forest was an ambitious plan for the Ōhau Conservation Trust but the support it had received had been amazing, Smith-Campbell said.
"I think for the community it's been a real focus, and I like to say that it's facilitated recovery. Because, people came along, stepped out of their everyday lives- any worries about rebuilding and insurance- and came and did something really positive, put some plants in the ground, talked with people that they might have not met before in the community... and that's a really important thing for a community that had the trauma that we did."
Smith-Campbell said of the 48 houses and structures destroyed in the wildfire, 30 had now been rebuilt, and there had also been 20 new houses built within the village area.
