Fire-lighting skills foreign to many newcomers

Lighting fires with the use of petrol or other liquid accelerants is "an accident waiting to happen", fire safety officer Stuart Ide, of the Frankton Fire Brigade warns.

He said while most New Zealanders were brought up knowing how to light up the fireplace or coal-fired barbecue, not everyone knows how to handle fire safely.

"The Wakatipu area has a large concentration of residents from countries which either have central heating as the norm, or do not need heating at all. So a lot of people who move in to a house heated by a wood burner have never had to light a fire before."

"If you have no experience, you can not be expected to know what to do. It would be like placing someone in front of a computer for the first time, and just thinking they will instinctively know what to do with it. You need to learn one way or another," he said.

On several occasions, foreign residents in Queenstown had sought Mr Ide's advice on lighting fires.

Enxin Chin, of Singapore, who has worked as a pharmacist in Queenstown for three years, recognised the situation.

"Before I moved to Queenstown, I have never had to light a fire or use a fireplace or wood burner. It is not a skill we usually need to learn in Singapore, where air conditioning is of more use than a fireplace," Ms Chin said.

The main problem for "beginners" when lighting a fire is to get enough heat going to light logs in the fireplace.

"What people often don't realise is that it is not the wood that burns, but the vapour released ... Putting a match under a log to ignite it will simply scorch the wood, rather than set it on fire," Mr Ide said.

The best procedure was first to light paper and use it to light small pieces of wood or kindling. Once the kindling was burning, it could be used to slowly light larger pieces of wood.