Nelson Wildfires One Year On, Fears Still Smoulder

For a firefighter and his family, the scars remain raw

- Lynley Ward

Volunteer firefighter Simon Ladley was pulling out of a friend’s driveway in Puponga at the top of the South Island when his pager went off: a tinder-dry hillside southwest of Nelson had erupted in flames.

He’d spent a long weekend fishing off Farewell Spit with his son Matthew (15) and was a two-and-a-half-hour drive away from the blaze near his Pigeon Valley home. He reckoned the fire would be well and truly dealt with by the time he got there.

“But when I came over the Takaka Hill, I looked at the smoke and looked at my boy and said, ‘They’re not putting that out in a hurry.’”

What started in a field that sunny February afternoon from a wayward spark would explode into the largest wildfire in New Zealand history, with the Nelson-Tasman region put under a state of emergency, and the threat of a potentially deadly inferno forcing the entire population of the nearby town of Wakefield to be evacuated.

A year has passed since the blaze rampaged across 2343ha of mainly pine plantation, but its impact is still keenly felt by those whose lives were upended, fleeing their homes, uncertain if there would be anything left to return to.

Simon’s wife Liz, who has lived in the Pigeon Valley Rd home for seven years, tells the Weekly every day was a rollercoaster of emotions.