‘Lot of work to do’ — Far North residents to get scrub fire update

Firefighters say there’s still “a lot of work to do” before they can declare the area around Waiharara, near Kaimaumau in Northland, safe after a scrub fire.

Incident Controller John Sutton said firefighters will be meeting with Far North residents on Wednesday morning to discuss their ongoing efforts.

Sutton said higher humidity and consistent winds had made firefighting efforts “a little easier” on Tuesday.

“We still have a lot of work to do before we can declare the area safe and we want to explain to the community what we’re doing,” he added.

There was a flare-up of the scrub fire on Boxing Day. Sutton said this had increased to about 2330 hectares with a perimeter of about 40km.

Aerial footage last week revealed the extent of the scrub fire — in its first four days, the blaze had burnt through more than 2000 hectares of Department of Conservation land.

The meeting will take place at the Wharemaru Marae o Kaimaumau at 11am.

The fire started on December 18.