The house was engulfed in flames when the firefighters arrived, barely five minutes after the alarm. Nothing could be done to save a family's home. Photo / Warren Buckland
The house was engulfed in flames when the firefighters arrived, barely five minutes after the alarm. Nothing could be done to save a family's home. Photo / Warren Buckland
Overheating cooking on a stove has again destroyed a family’s home in Hawke’s Bay after a breakfast-time blaze on Saturday morning.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) received a call to the house in Dundee Dr, Flaxmere, at 8.35am, and crews from Hastings and Napier arrived to find the buildingablaze, unable to be saved and nothing able to be salvaged - adults and children losing everything other than escaping with their lives.
At the scene, Senor Station Officer Bruno Saathof - with stunned neighbours looking on at the devastation on an otherwise idyllic spring morning, with barely a cloud in the sky - confirmed a pot on an unattended stove was at the centre of the fire.
“Being unattended, the fire was able to gain some hold before it was noticed, and although on the scene in about five minutes, flames were leaping out of every window and [the house] unable to be saved, although the flames were quickly contained,” Saathof said.
“The house is gone, knackered,” he said. “That’s what happens.”
It was the latest of a near daily spate of house fires in Hawke’s Bay, with unattended cooking a major cause - about 25 per cent, Saathof said.
At the weekend, Hawke’s Bay Today reported there had been 28 building fires in the region from Wairoa to Eketāhuna in the month from July 28 to August 28 - almost five times the six reported in the corresponding period in 2022.
There had been injuries and homes destroyed, but they could have been prevented if people exercised greater care, firefighters say.
“More than one in four house fires start in the kitchen,” Fenz senior advisor for community readiness and recovery Jess Nesbit had said. “Make sure you switch off the stove before walking off.”
Saathof said it seemed some of the messages, including those about upkeep and use of smoke detectors and fire alarms, were not being heeded.
Two fire trucks from the Hastings station, less than 5km from the fire, went to the blaze, supported by another from Napier firefighters remained at the scene for up to two hours..
