Mother rescues children from burning home

A mother has told of her horror as she rescued her children from their burning home on Saturday.

Ani Cooper said she was preparing lunch for her four young children at her Kowhai St home in Gisborne when she heard the smoke alarm go off.

"A couple of seconds after that I heard my (six-year-old) son scream so I ran down to see him but the door was closed and smoke was coming out from it.

"The first thing I saw was that he was standing in the middle of the room and it was filled with black, grey smoke. Fire was all around him, I mean all around him - going up the wall, burning the clothes and the bed was on fire.

"I ran through, trying to kick the fire and grabbed him. I physically ripped him quite hard, because he was so frozen still, and I didn't realise my one-year-old had followed me - being curious, she was right behind me."

Ms Cooper picked up her baby, ran to the front door and threw her six-year-old out, then went back in to get her five and eight-year-olds, who were playing in a bedroom.

By then fire had blocked off the front door, so Ms Cooper and her children darted towards an open lounge window.

In tears, Ms Cooper passed her baby to her eight-year-old, who went out the window first.

"I was crying during the whole time I was doing that."

Windows smashed from the heat as the family escaped.

"It was less than two minutes that my house and that room my son had been in had completely gone up," she said.

Her endearing memory was of seeing her panic-stricken six-year-old.

"Seeing his face and seeing he wouldn't move - he had frozen with fear. That was the scariest thing."

Her son was playing with a lighter when the fire started. He was still traumatised today, she said.

Tairawhiti fire safety officer Derek Goodwin said the cause of the fire was a "textbook" one.

"Historically there have been a lot of fires innocently started by children - usually by a lighter found lying around, then off to the bedroom where they feel safe and secure and they just start experimenting. Invariably they start to light something and it gets out of hand," he said.

He commended Ms Cooper's use of smoke alarms throughout the home.

As the fire spread, each of the alarms activated until they were left melted and in pieces on the charred floor.

The lounge, hallway and bedroom were destroyed, leaving the house uninhabitable.

All Ms Cooper's possessions and documents were lost.

She said she hoped to find support with Work and Income New Zealand today.

"If we didn't have those smoke alarms, there is no way we would have got out," she said.

"I definitely recommend them to everyone, it's scary to think if that had happened at night time."

- NZPA