18 May
A fire at a pony club in Puketapu at the weekend led to a different type of community work for 17 offenders.
Community Probation & Psychological Services Napier Area Manager Graham Wainwright says the fire, which occurred on Saturday 16 May, was believed to have been started by a loose wire caused by a bird flying into a power line at the pony club on Springfield Road.
While the fire brigade was called immediately, with two groups of community work offenders on-hand the situation was quickly under control.
Graham says the group heard a large bang while they were working and saw a bird drop to the ground and quickly realised a fire had started.
Senior Community Work Supervisor Mane Robinson rushed his group of offenders over and had them place dirt on the fire to keep it down. They also kept watch on proceedings to make sure the fire didn’t flare up again.
“Another Community Work Supervisor – Lyn Bryant and her group went to the road to signal the fire department and opened gates to improve their access"
Graham said the two supervisors and all the offenders handled the situation very well.
“They did a brilliant job, everyone pulled together and took responsibility, which stopped a possibly serious situation developing. If they hadn’t have been there the fire could have caused significant damage.”
After the excitement, the two groups of offenders returned to their work clearing tracks alongside the river.
The sentence of community work requires offenders to do unpaid work in the community for non-profit organisations as a way of making up for their offending.
Annually New Zealand communities benefit from almost three million hours of labour supplied through community work sentences.
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