Nyree & Pieter's house lost in a wildfire

We can’t begin to thank everyone for their kind thoughts and donations at this trying time for us.

We are luckily fully insured so things with the rebuild are progressing well, if not slowly. It is likely to be 2022 before the house is completed and we can move back up to Ohau. We are currently living in a hydro house in Twizel which is proving challenging, but character building!

As you may be aware the fire spread rapidly due to the wilding pines and trees in the valley, of which we had many on our property. We decided that the money you donated would go toward the cost of clearing the trees (which is not under insurance). Many of you may know that our property borders much of Ohau village and we felt that it was really important that our trees were cleared to reduce any further fire risk from tinder dry burnt trees still standing but also to give ourselves and our village neighbours peace of mind that we have done everything we can to reduce risk in future. We had a contractor on site for 2 weeks bulldozing the trees into windrows with a digger to assist. They have done an amazing job and left our block clear and ready to sow grass seed. The aim is the grass seed with compete and help reduce the wilding pines regenerating.

Again, please accept our sincerest thanks for all of your donations, we read the kind messages at the time and they made all the difference knowing that we had lots of support.

Nyree, Pieter, Josh and Emily Schaar