Tākaka’s chief fire office Philip Woolf has worked with his team more times than he can count, training for large-scale fires in and around the town’s centre.
But he never thought of using his own building in Buxton Lane as a training site.
It was a sense of disbelief when he got the call at 3am on Thursday, 11 January, to say his building and business was on fire.
“I won’t repeat the words I used but it was a mad scramble to get mobilised and get back from Westhaven where I was at the time.”
Philip’s business – ITM Tākaka - and his building that was home to it, went up in flames during the fire, which also started to spread to the neighbouring PGG Wrightson building.
Philip says he had full faith that the team were well prepared and ready to put the strategies into place that they’d been working on for the past 10 years to contain the blaze at the Tākaka ITM site – Golden Bay’s biggest supplier of timber products.
“We do regular exercise and training on major buildings and utilise the area around the ITM, but I never thought about training on my own building.”
Crews came from Tākaka, Collingwood, Upper Tākaka, Kaiteriteri, Motueka and Nelson City to help fight the fire, with 13 trucks sent in total. At its peak, around 40 firefighters were battling the blaze, according to Fire and Emergency NZ Nelson Marlborough district commander Grant Haywood.
They were able to contain and extinguish the fire before 5am and stop the spread, saving the surrounding buildings.
Philip says foresight from the community and Tasman District Council a decade ago, meant they had access to pressurised water to immediately begin bringing the blaze under control.
“I’ll be pretty bold in saying without that the town would’ve been in real trouble. It was a godsend.
“There were a lot of positives - the wind wasn't blowing, we had that water supply and we had fast action. The FENZ team were on the ground in six minutes, I’d challenge anyone to even get out of bed and dressed in that time at 3am.
“Ed Solly actually heard the popping sounds and thought it was truck tyres going off in their yard, so he got up and mobilised his team, we basically filled tankers from Fonterra, co-ordinated by Solly’s.
“I can’t praise enough the response of the team, it could’ve been a lot worse, it’s bad enough, but it could’ve been much worse.”
He says the support from the community following the fire has been “unbelievable”.
“The support from the community has been unbelievable. Not even just in Golden Bay. We had messages of support coming from Dubai, Perth, Canada... We can’t reiterate enough the community support and how outstanding it’s been. Right down to a 13-year-old getting up and baking some scones and saying ‘hey, we appreciate what you do’.”
Philip says the staff are doing extremely well in the circumstances.
“The staff, they’re just gobsmacked by the support as well, they’re so appreciative.
“PGG Wrightson unfortunately got affected by the fire and our hearts go out to them. While we’ve got a total burnsite ourselves, PGG have got smoke damage.”
Trading has resumed for ITM Tākaka with a click-and-collect service thanks to support from the Motueka office and the insurance campany working hard to get the business up-and-running again.
“Trade is important for us but we’re also mindful of our DIY customers, so they can phone, text and email and we will get what they need here.”
