TOP STORY: Staff flee inferno

Doug Laing
Workers left possessions including passports and cash behind as they fled for their lives from a huge fire which destroyed the Longview Packing apple packhouse south of Hastings on Saturday.
Cars belonging to two staff were destroyed and immigrant workers, some unable to speak English, were in tears as they worried about the implication of losing crucial papers and other belongings in the inferno.
A mother lost money she had brought to work to pay bills later in the day, and the keys of several cars belonging to workers were left in the blazing building as staff fled.
Some hot-wired the vehicles to get home, but others had to leave their cars behind, wondering if they would still have a job today.
The fire destroyed the packing-shed, and about 4000 packing cases, less than three months after an early-morning fire destroyed a major fruitpacking plant Fruitpackers in Whakatu.
A man was charged with arson in relation to that fire last December, but investigators believe the cause of Saturday's blaze was electrical and that there are no suspicious circumstances.
Almost all available firefighters in Hastings, Napier and Havelock North fought the fire, using water initially from apple wash tanks, swimming pools and a well, and ultimately a fleet of five tankers, from as far away as Tikokino and Haumoana, ferrying water from hydrants on the outskirts of Hastings.
They managed to stop the blaze from reaching the neighbouring Growers Trust coolstore and its stock and also the home of owner Frank Caccioppoli and his family.
Packhouse workers helped move furniture and family belongings from the endangered building, as a fire crew kept the blaze at bay.
The personal toll was revealed by worker Rosita Crown, one of the first to notice the fire spreading up a wall only minutes after starting work at 7am.
She told Hawke's Bay Today: "It was terrible. I feel so sorry for them."
She also felt sorry for their employer Frank Cacciopoli and said: "They'd just done it up. It was all nice in there. And Frank, he's a good boss."
About 100 workers were in the building at the time Ms Crown saw the flames creeping up a wall less than 10 metres away, already at head-height, and workers began yelling warnings to workmates to "get out."
They included workers high up near the roof who had to sprint for the stairs, as smoke filled the building. Some staff tried to use extinguishers, including administration manager, Olympic Games rowing stars' father Hornby Evers-Swindell, who rushed from his office then realised it was too late.
The blaze was reported at 7.11am, just as a fire service crew from Napier pulled into Hastings on inter-station back-up for Hastings crews which were at a house fire reported just 20 minutes earlier. The crew found the fire rapidly taking hold with a pall of smoke visible across the Heretaunga Plains.