A fire lit in a clean wood stove and in that I mean a stove that has had every bit of ash removed before hand. An ambient fire is then lit for eight hours and it matters very little what wood is burnt. Available wood at the time was pine,beech, and manuka. The damper remains open for the occupants to have a flame to look at…as I say an ambient fire. This is very carefully explained in the witnesses affidavit. It was then left to go out for a period of 36hours.
When I opened the door of the wee rad stove and placed my hand above the white ash it was as cold as the grave in there. There was no charcoal lumps everything was burnt. I then sprinkled the ash slowly into a metal bucket to see if there were any hidden charcoal pieces or heat source. I scooped out 4.5 little fire side shovels which amassed to a little over an inch in depth in the metal bucket. I then again sprinkled these contents slowly over a lawn area. There was a fire that was raging in my wood shed about two hours later. The wood shed is fifty meters down wind from where I put the ash out.
First of all there is no way hot ash can survive 36 hours under those conditions end of story
Secondly if I had not honestly put my hand up and said I put ash out that day they would never have been able to prosecute me.
Thirdly that would have to have been obviously hot ash to have started a fire in such a short time making me look as though I had not cleared a fire in my life- again impossible.
Fourthly three eye witnesses saw the wood shed only ablaze and yet were ignored.
The joke is we were fully insured despite the insurance firm trying to wriggle out of paying by deeming us “not a lifestyle business” We got passed that one on appeal but the sad fact was we were not insured for enough- a mere $200k- when in fact if we had read the small print we should have added the clause and been insured for $2 million instead. The other joke is only one investigator investigated the scene properly and he perjured himself in the court room on two occasions. His idea of an investigation is not to measure the amount of ash he says was mine instead he vaguely holds his hands apart [around a meter it was ascertained] and that was accepted by the judge. My actual ash would have amounted to less than a foot and the depth would have been around a half inch. He could not comment on depth as he did not take any measurements whatsoever and the pile he was referring to was not the pile I deposited that day.
Justice? they may as well have thrown a rope over the nearest branch and hung me there and then.
There are only four wildfire experts in New Zealand and guess what? they all work closely together most of the time does that ring right?
Guess what the judge was an ex. partner of the firm that was busy nailing me to the cross- does that ring right?
Is it also right that there is such an imbalance in lawyers skills in a case like this? I mean on the one hand you have two high flying Auckland lawyers with their legal assistants in toe in one corner and a one man band legal aid amateur on the other. I mean WTF chance have you got anyway.
All I would ask for in a perfect world is five minutes in a locked room with the two high flyers- winner take all. Now that’s what I call justice!
