Fire and Emergency New Zealand has thanked the public for what it called a quiet Guy Fawkes night, recording 18 fireworks-related fires across the country on Thursday evening compared with 30 a year earlier.

The agency said on Friday that most of the callouts were vegetation fires, none of them major, and that every one could have been avoided. Since fireworks went on sale on Monday, crews have attended 31 fires linked to them nationwide.

The national tally follows a week in which Southland and Otago crews dealt with seven suspected fireworks fires in the two days before Guy Fawkes. FENZ did not provide a regional breakdown of Thursday night's incidents.

The night was not quiet everywhere in the south. In Dunedin, police arrested three people after fireworks were fired at firefighters and officers in the North Dunedin student quarter, the Otago Daily Times reported. Emergency services took 15 calls between 9pm and 1am about groups shooting fireworks at each other and about couches being set alight in Castle Street and surrounding streets.

Firefighters dealing with two couch fires allegedly came under fire from fireworks let off by drunk students and their friends, and officers who arrived to assist were targeted in turn, the paper reported. No one was injured. The three people arrested have been charged with assaulting first responders. Police have not released their names or ages, and no court date has been reported.

Senior Sergeant Craig Dinnissen told the ODT the calls involved groups of 10 to 20 people firing at one another from their own properties, and warned that the behaviour could easily have caused serious injury, saying people had lost eyes in the past. Police said they would have extra staff in the student quarter on Friday night and would take a zero-tolerance approach.

It is the second year in a row that Castle Street has produced incidents of this kind. In 2025 a fire crew withdrew from the area after being shot at while dousing a burning couch, and three people were arrested that year as well.

FENZ said the weekend forecast of cloud and rain across much of the country would help reduce fire risk, but that a low risk was not the same as no risk. People still planning to let off fireworks over the weekend were asked to check conditions and any restrictions at checkitsalright.nz, to respect council bans in public spaces, to avoid windy conditions, to keep a bucket of water or a hose nearby, to point fireworks skywards away from anything that could burn, and to soak spent fireworks before putting them in the bin. Neighbours with pets or livestock should be given warning, the agency said.

Fireworks can legally be let off on private property throughout the year, but public sales for 2026 ended on Thursday.

Anyone who sees a fire getting out of control should call 111. Suspicious or dangerous use of fireworks can be reported to police on 105.