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Otago fire - Source: ONE News -
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More than 40 firefighters, divided into eight crews, will make a big push on Friday to knock back the fire in Mt Allan Forest which has burned over 800 hectares northwest of Dunedin.
They faced a long, hard battle over several days, with crews having to use diggers and bulldozers to open up the earth so that water could be dumped on wood burning underground.
Authorities were expected to review on Friday the continuing evacuation of five families from their homes, and the halt to tourist trips on the
Taieri Gorge railway in the southern corner of the forest.
The Mt Allan fire had consumed 820 hectares of trees and scrub by Thursday night since breaking out about 4pm on Tuesday in a cut-over forestry block just above the Taieri River.
Principal rural fire officer Graeme Still told NZPA that a wind shift on Thursday from a northerly to a westerly had relieved worries the fire might burn under electricity cables, and that during the afternoon the wind speed had dropped from up to 60kmh early in the day to about 20kmh.
On Friday, Still will commit his ground crews to a stepped-up battle, with some of them working closely with the helicopter pilots dropping water scooped with monsoon buckets from the Taieri River.
The fire's size increased by only about 100 hectares on Thursday.
The fire apparently started through friction on a rope used on a log-hauler.
Firefighters estimated one third of the land so far burned over was standing timber, and two thirds was cut-over land with scrub and trimmings left around the stumps of the felled trees.
Mt Allan Forest comprised a single block about 10km north of Mosgiel, and covered 4958 hectares, of which 4420 hectares was growing trees or awaiting replanting. The forest covered an area of steep slope ranging from inland hills through to the Otago uplands.
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