Inferno traced to electrical fault

The fire that gutted a Katikati packhouse on Wednesday night was caused by an electrical fault, Tauranga's top firefighter has confirmed.
The Satara packhouse on Wedgewood St went up in flames at 5.15pm and 13 fire crews from around Bay of Plenty helped extinguish the blaze.
Nobody was seriously injured in the blaze, but one firefighter from Waihi Beach fell half a metre from a ladder and bruised his ribs after he slipped.
About 15 million kiwifruit were destroyed.
Chief Fire Officer Ron Devlin said the electrical fault has been traced back to an area by the main office area in the building.
"A short or light in one of the main switchboards," he said.
"It could've been from an electrical spike, it could've been from anything really."
The efforts of firefighters in containing the blaze have drawn praise.
If the packhouse fire had not been contained, then it would have engulfed adjoining buildings and could have been as big as the April 5 fire at Tamahere near Hamilton.
"It would have been a really big fire," said Mark Keller, Tauranga senior station officer and the incident commander at the scene.
"It was good firemanship."
Paul van Kol, Greerton station officer, said the "saving grace" was the nearby hydrants. The easy access to water saved at least three other buildings attached to the coolstores from going up in flames as well.
Mr van Kol said the eight fire appliances pumped out about 360,000 litres of water per hour over several hours on Wednesday night. It took several hours to get the blaze under control.
"The emergency was kind of over by 1am, we were scaling down operations by then," Mr Devlin said.
Firefighters were at the site dampening down hot spots and clearing up the site all day yesterday.
As of yesterday afternoon Katikati Fire Brigade had taken control of the scene, as appliances from other cities were no longer needed.
Mr Devlin expected them to return a couple of times over the next few days to finish off.
Mr Devlin said yesterday a hose line was left with the owners of the packhouse after it was handed back to them yesterday at 3.30pm.
"Once they start the demolition, they may need to cool things down as they go, because it was pretty deep-seated," he said.
"I would suspect [the packhouse] will get knocked down.
"It's a pretty solid building I'd have to say, mostly the structures inside are the problem, all the steel racking and that is unstable from the fire, but the building itself is pretty solid."
with Lauren Owens