Alcohol, unattended cooking, smoke alarms without batteries - a recipe for disaster that Kaikohe's fire chief says could have claimed half a dozen lives.
Fire broke out in a two-bedroom rental home on Kaikohe's Windsor Rd about 1am yesterday, starting from the stove top, spreading up the kitchen wall and into the roof cavity.
Up to six people lived at the address - including two children and a 4-month-old baby - but it is unclear how many were home when the fire started.
A clearly frustrated Bill Hutchinson, Kaikohe's chief fire officer, says all the adults at the scene were inebriated and one of two smoke alarms at the property had been removed, while the other had no batteries.
"It's a recipe for disaster. No working smoke alarms, unattended cooking and drunk people."
Ironically, the alarm was raised by some of the home's occupants when they were drinking across the street. Seeing flames shooting from their roof they raced home, woke those still asleep and tried in vain to put out the fire.
"Otherwise that house would have burnt to the ground and killed everyone inside," Mr Hutchinson says.
Two volunteer crews fought the fire until about 3am.
The blaze had spread right through the roof space, forcing firefighters to remove roofing iron at either end of the house to extinguish hot spots and remove burning insulation.
The kitchen was destroyed, the roof needed replacing, and there was smoke damage throughout the house. However there was little water or structural damage and the house could be repaired.
"It was a good save, given the time of day the fire started."
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