Tauranga firefighters saved a house from being engulfed in flames in an operation that swallowed up nearly all the resources of the Tauranga and Greerton fire stations.
"It was a good save, the guys worked really hard," Tauranga senior station officer Mark Keller told the Bay of Plenty Times.
A garage next to a two-level Te Hono St house in Maungatapu was an inferno when the first crews arrived soon after the alarm was raised at 12.30am yesterday.
The fire had spread from the garage to a wall of the house and up into the roof cavity, with building paper quickly spreading the roof fire to all four sides of the building's lower storey, which was about twice the size of the top storey.
Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus attacked the fire in the roof from opposite corners of the house, removing roofing and then firing water in both directions to cover all four sections of the outside edges of the roof.
"The whole house could have ended up being fully involved in a very short time; smoke was pouring out of the lower roof," Mr Keller said.
"If we were not able to control that, the house would have been engulfed from every corner."
Another priority was where the flames had spread up the wall next to the garage and ignited the upstairs bedroom. That fire was fought from inside and outside the bedroom before that, too, was brought under control.
He estimated it took about 10 minutes to bring the garage fire under control and half an hour for the roof fire, followed by the long process of dampening down, with the last crew departing nearly four hours after the initial alarm.
At one point of the operation, when crews in the roof were running out of air, the alarm went out for back-ups, resulting in nearly all the resources of the stations turning out to the property. The two owners of the house and three flatmates all escaped unharmed. Mr Keller said the house would need some serious repairs, with quite a bit of burned timber needing to be replaced in the roof.
Mr Keller said there was no obvious cause of the fire, which destroyed the detached garage and investigations were still taking place.
The last fire crew left the property about 4.18am yesterday.