A scrub fire in South Auckland this afternoon is being treated as suspicious after it spread quickly throughout a reserve and threatened nearby homes.
Fire crews were called to the Papatoetoe fire at Kohuora Park just after 1.20pm today.
Assistant Area Commander Chris Delfos told 1 NEWS eight fire crews were battling the fire in native wetlands and nearby houses were evacuated.
"The reason why we evacuated those was because of a large amount of smoke and ash flying through the air so that was just precautionary," Mr Delfos said.
"It did start away from the public area where there is no electrical appliances or anything so its undetermined at this stage but suspicious.
"We are already into a very dry summer and its just going to get dryer and with the wind conditions that we’ve got today.
"Once a fire starts its very difficult to control in these conditions.
"We are on top of the fire at the moment and we will be giving the crews a break and then there is a lot of hose to make up as the fire extended over a large area."
Emergency Services have since extinguished the scrub fire and are now cooling down hot spots.
The fire covered an area of 80 by 30 metres.
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