Two men who checked a house ablaze in Whangarei thought they could hear a child inside screaming, so they broke in the locked front door.
"A ginger cat came out at about 100 miles an hour," said one of the pair, David Hankinson, of Kamo.
He crawled under the heavy smoke inside
the blazing building on Western Hills Dr near Burger King, kicked open a bedroom door and retreated when he found no one inside. But the crews of two Whangarei Fire Service appliances which arrived minutes later rescued two dogs from inside a back room of the house.
Mr Hankinson, 44, who had come to Whangarei from Britain's Isle of Man in January with his wife Alison and their two children, spotted smoke as the family was driving past the house about 1.30pm on Saturday.
"We did a U-turn and while Alison called the fire brigade I went up the drive and found both the front and back doors locked," he said. "Another guy came up the drive with a fire extinguisher and we were a bit reluctant to break the door in because of the draught it would create.
"But there was a car parked in the drive and boots beside the door so when we heard what sounded like screaming we felt we had no choice."
After smashing in the front door, Mr Hankinson crawled inside on his stomach, shouting to attract the attention of anyone who could be there.
"I went in as far as the smoke would allow, then backed out," he said, dismissing praise for his rescue mission with the remark: "Well, you really can't just stand there."
Whangarei Fire Service senior station officer Wipari Henwood said the fire was "well involved" with flames coming out windows when the two appliances had arrived.
"It appeared to have started in the laundry, spread to the kitchen and was in the space under the roof," he said. "There was no one inside apart from the two dogs."
The fire was soon doused and police and fire safety investigators began looking into the cause of the blaze. A washing machine and clothes drier suspected of involvement were to be analysed by experts.
"The householders could have left these appliances on when they left the house earlier," Mr Henwood said.
"The safety message in this is that clothes driers should not be left unattended and people using them should clean their lint filters."
Two men who checked a house ablaze in Whangarei thought they could hear a child inside screaming, so they broke in the locked front door.
"A ginger cat came out at about 100 miles an hour," said one of the pair, David Hankinson, of Kamo.
He crawled under the heavy smoke inside
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