Deliberately lit fire in toilets threatens staff

Hawke's Bay Seafoods director Nino D'Esposito laments the torching of the customer toilets at the company's Napier shop yesterday. Police later spoke to two youngsters believed to have deliberately lit the fire. Photo / Duncan Brown

A fire which threatened to engulf the main road shop of fishing company Hawke's Bay Seafoods in Napier yesterday is believed to have been deliberately started by two boys on a comfort stop with a group travelling from Gisborne to Wellington.

The boys left the toilet moments before black smoke began filtering into the dining area just after 10am. A fire alarm sounded, staff evacuated the Pandora Rd premises, and the Fire Service was on the scene and extinguishing the fire with a single hose minutes later.

The scene at Hawke's Bay Seafoods in Pandora Rd, Napier, yesterday after a fire crew extinguished a deliberately-lit fire.

Evidence showed paper had been set alight in a small rubbish bin - the fire spread rapidly into the walls, with smoke and flames billowing through the small self-contained boys' room by the time fire crews arrived from the Napier station less than 1km away.

Fire Service Napier station officer Peter Draper said that even though it was confined to the toilets, the fire had "huge" potential to spread rapidly into the rest of the retail complex and an adjoining new two-storey factory and administration block.

He said staff did the right thing by evacuating the building and leaving the firefighting to the experts.

The first crew could see the thick and acrid black smoke billowing from the building as they approached, and it would have been a highly toxic mix, fuelled by the burning of the wall linings and insulation, he said.

The flames were extinguished quickly, but two crews from Napier and one from Hastings stayed at the scene for more than an hour to make sure there was no risk of reignition in the building.

HB Seafoods director Nino D'Esposito was in his office in the new block overlooking the inner harbour when the fire alarm activated, and his first response was to call a staff member to turn it off.

"We've been having a few problems with the alarms," he said, "and we haven't had a fire in the whole 20 years we've been here."

He said at least a dozen staff would have been on the premises at the time, and all had evacuated, along with a small number of customers in the shop which had opened about an hour earlier.

While the shop was able to resume trading by early afternoon, the dining area and toilets were out of action. Mr D'Esposito said repairs could be started today.

The two boys spoken to by police later were understood to be about 10-11. Deliberately-set fires in Hawke's Bay have been concerning the fire service and police, who last week charged three teenage boys with arson relating to a fire which destroyed a pirate ship attraction at Hastings theme park Splash Planet recently.

Both fires were during the school holidays.