TOP STORY: Blaze rips through home

LUCY CRAYMER
When Anne Ford left her balmy Hastings house for a breath of fresh air shortly before midnight last night she got a whiff of smoke.
In winter that would be normal on Park Road North, with residents making use of their fireplaces. On one of the hottest days this summer it was not. Then she noticed an orange glow in the sky and realised this was no intentional fire. Ms Ford and her son Jacob, 18, rushed down the road to see what it was.
"Jacob called the fire brigade and I was knocking on the door of the first house (which was ablaze)," she said.
Ms Ford and a man, believing the house was occupied, started knocking on the house's windows and doors in an attempt to wake any occupants.
This morning her knuckles were raw from hitting the house. She ran next door to alert occupants of a neighbouring house because flames were licking at the walls.
The neighbour, who asked not to be named, said Ms Ford's pounding at the door was the first she knew of the fire.
Surveying the damage to her house this morning she was thankful the fire had only left a couple of windows broken, paint bubbled and piping bent.
There was also water damage in her son's bedroom.
"I was quite worried last night because the fire was coming out of there," she said pointing toward the charred structure only a couple of metres from her house.
She did not know the burned house's occupants but believed they had been away for the last three or four days.
She said the house had been sold about a year and a half ago and the inside of the house had been completely renovated and the owners had just begun painting the outside of it.
Four Hastings fire trucks rushed to the fire fearing people might be trapped inside or that strong winds would fan the fire onto neighbouring houses.
This morning firefighters were back at the property dampening the house down after smoke was seen coming from the roof. Much of the house was destroyed with the corrugated iron roof buckled and walls burned through.
Hastings senior station officer Dennis O'Leary said a number of trucks had been sent because the fire was threatening to leap onto the next door property and neighbours thought there might have been people inside. Mr O'Leary said the strong winds meant it took the crews three hours to control the fire.