Death referred to coroner after body found at scene of fire in Kaiwaka, Northland

Our Lane in Kaiwaka where two vehicles caught fire on Wednesday. Photo / Jaime Lyth.

“I heard two explosions ... and then I saw flames.”

A neighbour has described the moment they went to help put out a tractor fire in Kaiwaka from which a man’s body was recovered by police.

Police say the death does not appear to be suspicious and has been referred to the coroner.

Mechanic Mike Mitchell was second to the scene of Wednesday’s blaze in which a fire took hold of a car and tractor parked next to a house on Our Lane at 12.48pm.

He saw flames quickly spread from the vehicles toward the house.

“I saw one guy beating the grass because it had caught on fire from the tractor and the vehicle,” Mitchell said.

“The [flames] were running along the front paddock and started going towards the house.”

Mitchell said they went to look for water but there was none.

“[...] so we had to start ripping the shrubbery like along the fence to stop [the fire] from going towards the house to make a barrier sort of thing.”

The handful of neighbours, who had rushed to help, worked to pull the long grass around the house out of the ground so as to create a fire break using the exposed dirt.

Once Mitchell and the other neighbours felt it was safe, they went inside the house to ensure no one was trapped.

“We found some watering spray bottles on the floor and managed to get some gravity water from the tank and just filled those up.

“It was pretty full on,” Mitchell said.

Neighbour Martin Anderton had sprinted across the road when he heard the house was ablaze.

Once there, he discovered Mitchell had managed to stop the fire that had encroached on the house.

“The car was gone and all the trees were on fire,” Anderton said. “It was like a big ring of fire going around the area getting bigger and bigger and we were running around the edge putting it out.”

When firefighters from Kaiwaka, Maungatūroto, Wellsford, and Mangawhai arrived the home’s weatherboards had already been burnt away so badly you could see into the house.

Deputy chief fire officer Adrian Buxton said the intensity of the blaze prompted him to increase the callout to a second alarm which brought in the three other Northland brigades.

According to Anderton, the brigades had struggled to access the fire due to the driveway.

The neighbour who was first on the scene but did not want to be named said the Our Lane residents had banded together to help put the fire out.

Anderton said: “There were some heroes that day.”

The neighbours had learned from firefighters at the scene that a body had been found.