Fire puts Gloriavale plant out of action

| Otago Daily Times | Brendon McMahon |
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A LARGE fire which swept through a boiler house at the Gloriavale Chris­tian Com­munity at Lake Haupiri on Fri­day night has rendered the com­munity’s com­mer­cial meal plant out of action for months at least. Com­munity spokes­man Peter Right­eous said the blaze erup­ted in the ren­der­ing plant boiler house — about 500m away from the liv­ing quar­ters and com­munity build­ings — shortly before 9pm, extens­ively dam­aging the boil­ers and elec­trics sup­port­ing plant oper­a­tions.

‘‘It will be out for sev­eral months,’’ he said.

One of the two boil­ers and the elec­trical sup­ply were des­troyed.

A team of about four trained fire­fight­ers liv­ing at Gloriavale did their best to battle the blaze before the nearest bri­gades arrived from Moana and Nga­here, Mr Right­eous said. Moana Volun­teer Fire Bri­gade Chief Fire Officer Dave Lar­kin said the response was quickly escal­ated to a second­stage alarm, the Grey­mouth and Brun­ner bri­gades being dis­patched to what was a ‘‘big one’’.

The 20sq m boiler house was fully involved in flames and had already been evac­u­ated when they arrived.

Over two and a­half hours, numer­ous fire crews, sup­por­ted by the Grey­mouth­based Fire and Emer­gency Com­mand Unit, worked to quell the blaze.

CFO Lar­kin said the Gloriavale crew had suc­cess­fully pre­ven­ted the fire from spread­ing before the bri­gades arrived. ‘‘It wasn’t going to cause any prob­lems but there were other build­ings around.

‘‘From my under­stand­ing, I think they know how it star­ted . . . it’s an unfor­tu­nate incid­ent,’’ he said.

Scene com­mander Grey­mouth bri­gade Deputy Chief Fire Officer Colin Thomas said the fire was reas­on­ably large, with a lot of mater­ial in the build­ing fuel­ling it.

‘‘By the time we got there, the fire had been knocked down. ‘‘It’s done some dam­age to their plant, which will take time to rec­tify.

‘‘Because of the nature of the fire and the amount of stuff in the build­ing, it took time.’’

One fire­fighter suf­fer­ing heat exhaus­tion was taken to hos­pital as a pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ure. DCFO Thomas said a ‘‘poten­tial issue’’ which might have caused the fire had been tent­at­ively iden­ti­fied but there was noth­ing sus­pi­cious about it.

The meal plant is one of sev­eral busi­nesses oper­ated by Gloriavale as part of its Lake Haupiri com­munity.

It renders beef and sheep offal plus animal skins into a com­mer­cial product.

Mr Right­eous said the plant employed about a dozen people, includ­ing engin­eers in the com­munity.

A timeline for resum­ing oper­a­tions would emerge soon, he said.