Invercargill senior station officer Nick Barclay said the first call about the fire came from a member of the public at 5.30am.
Crews could easily see flames above the tree line as they approached the Oreti Beach entrance.
"The wind was quite strong and it was coming towards us quite quickly."
Mr Barclay said he decided to call for helicopter assistance to drench the fire within half an hour of arriving on the scene.
"As it started to intensify and grow and come towards us and get into the pine plantation, that’s when I made the call to bring in the helicopters.
"They can get into the areas we just can’t get into and initially it’s just too dangerous...
"Fire can go faster than you can run, so we really don’t want to put guys in harm’s way."
The first crews prevented the fire from jumping the road into the sand dunes on the south side of Oreti Rd, he said.
"That was really important, because if it got into those, with the wind, it would’ve just kept going down the beach... Once the helicopters got here, they could get into this main part because it’s a bit dangerous if you have fire crews on the ground in the pine forest itself."
At the peak of the fire two helicopters were dousing the fire with the assistance of four tankers refilling at the Invercargill airport on rotation.
Initially four teams of fire fighters and two officers, in breathing apparatus, worked to cut the fire off.
Incident managers were concerned for Oki St residents, and police were on standby to evacuate them but were stood down once it became evident the homes were not in the fire’s pathway.
Assistant commander and group manager Hamish Angus said the first crews on the scene "did a bloody good job of containing it to the north side of the road".
Ground crews had been redeployed after the monsoon buckets had knocked some of the intensity out of the fire.
Water had been sourced from a nearby pond.
Earthmoving equipment was brought in mid-morning to dig a fire break.
He expected three crews would remain on site for the rest of the day.
Fire investigators were on the scene to determine the cause of what started it at the front edge of the beach.
- By Toni McDonald
