Praise for Emergency Services

Far North Holdings would like to express its appreciation to the staff of the Fire Service, Department of Conservation and District Council for the significant effort which went into containing the fire adjacent to the Bay of Islands Airport on Wednesday afternoon.

Company chairman, Tony Norman says “special mention must be made of the professionalism and courage of the four helicopter pilots who for nearly seven hours continuously bombarded the flames with hundreds of monsoon bucket loads of water and fire retardant”.

“It was gratifying to see that our emergency planning rolled out smoothly and efficiency with excellent inter-agency cooperation. Our thanks therefore go to everyone concerned, be they people that were fighting the fire or the personal that responded promptly to secure personal property at the airport by relocating aircraft and cars to safe locations.

"All can be proud of the role they played in ensuring a successful outcome,” he said.
Three flights were cancelled because of the closure of the airport.

However only minimal damage occurred in an event that could have escalated into a major incident with potentially hundred of thousands dollars in damage if it had not been for the sustained effort of fire fighting agencies and members of the public who assisted during the emergency.