Lakes Hayes fire - investigation underway, "extremely fortunate" no houses damaged

Fire and Emergency New Zealand has issued the following statement to Crux after yesterday's grass fire:

Fire and Emergency New Zealand responded to a scrub fire at Lake Hayes with six trucks from 3pm onwards on Sunday afternoon.

The fire was contained by 3.35pm, and then crews focussed on dampening down remaining hotspots. The last crew left at around 6.30pm.

We were extremely fortunate that the wind wasn’t any stronger, or we would have seen damage to houses as well as the park.

Outdoor fires are currently prohibited in this area because the fire risk is very high at the moment.

The area around Queenstown has a lot of vegetation that has dried out over summer, and any fires that get started can take our firefighters hours to put out.

In this case, the community acted quickly to contact us, so we were able to get it under control fast.

The investigation into the fire is under way, so we aren’t able to comment on cause at this time.

Main Image: Frame from video shot by Oli Maud