Firefighters fighting the 2024 Port Hills' fire. Photo: CHRIS SKELTON
Fire and Emergency has released its operational review into last year's Port Hills' fire in Christchurch, days away from the first anniversary of the blaze.
The review said the 2017 and 2024 fires were quite different, even though both were roughly in the same place, and in the midst of extreme fire conditions.
FENZ said there was less fuel to burn last year, partly because McVicar's pine forestry block had largely burnt in 2017, leaving young trees, scrub and slash.
Large areas of gorse were also gone, but much of the north facing grass was cured to between 80 percent to 100 percent.
Curing refers to the process of grass dying off and drying out after seeding - the greater the curing, the greater the fire risk.
South-facing hillsides were considerably greener, and the grass was cured to as low as 30 percent in some wet gullies.
The review outlined a swift and aggressive response to the fires, which were first reported to Fire and Emergency just before quarter past two on Valentine's Day by a passer-by.
By three thirty, a fifth alarm had been triggered and requests sent to make helicopters available. Within two hours, the decision had been made to evacuate some properties.
The review emphasised lessons learnt from the 2017 fire, as well as ongoing work with the community such as public meetings on risk mitigation, fire break management and a trial of fire resistant plants.
The review identified areas for improvement, including better resourcing air operation controllers - which it said quickly became overloaded - and setting up a full incident management team sooner.
It puts the cost of fighting last year's fires at three million dollars, compared to the almost seven million dollar cost of fighting the 2017 fire, one of the biggest and most severe in recent New Zealand history.
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