Port Hills homes could have been saved - fire official

Fire and Emergency has acknowledged that some houses destroyed the Port Hill's fires may have been saved if a different approach had been taken.

Two separate fires, several kilometres apart, started on 13 February, and both are now considered suspicious.

A helicopter pilot died fighting the fires, which eventually combined into one large blaze that gutted 11 houses and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes.

Fire and Emergency today released an independent review looking at how emergency services responded.

It identified communication breakdowns with affected Port Hills residents and a lack of cohesion between the Urban and Rural Fire Authority.

Fire and Emergency chief executive Rhys Jones said lessons had been learned.

"In the cold light of hindsight decisions could have been different which may have saved houses but the decisions at the time were always based around safety of people in the community and of our own firefighters."

Mr Jones said in a briefing there was confusion in the response, which was built on the experience of smaller forest fires being contained within one area, while the Port Hills fire covered three fire jurisdictions. The recommendation was to have one system across districts.

Second fire also 'deliberately lit'

In July, police launched a criminal investigation after the cause of one of the fires - on Marley's Hill - was found to be suspicious.

Fire and Emergency rural manager Richard (Mac) McNamara said today the other blaze - the Early Valley Road fire - was in their view also deliberately lit.

That view was based on an electrical engineering report, forensic examinations by police and fire investigators and interviews. An electrical fault had been ruled out.

But the official finding was undetermined, because there wasn't enough evidence for a definitive conclusion, he said.

Mr McNamara appealed for information from the public and community including photos or "conversations that have occurred since the fires".

"We need more information," he said.

On the fire service response, he said the fire had broached boundaries gone into an urban community and that was a first for New Zealand.

"If we don't learn lessons from this we'll continue to make mistakes - and that would be the ultimate failure."

Kieren Grace, whose home was destroyed during the blaze, he blames poor management and communication from the fire service for his loss.

Mr Grace said if fire management stayed the same he would have issues trusting the fire service in a similar situation.