KEY POINTS:
All Kiri and Denis Saunders have left after 40 years of living together is a handful of family photos and a pile of ashes.
And they have the photos thanks only to a mystery passer-by who plucked them from the walls just before their house was engulfed in
fire.
By the time emergency services from Hikurangi and Kamo arrived at the isolated Helena Bay home last Friday, there was nothing else left to save.
Mrs Saunders was working on a computer in her sleepout when she heard her grandchildren screaming. She ran outside to find them scrambling away from the blazing house.
Her daughter Moana, who is seven months pregnant, was also in the sleepout and ran to the house to grab whatever she could.
"I screamed at her to get out," Mrs Saunders said. "She called 111 then ran around the house unchaining the dogs, which were tied up close to the flames. A man driving down the road saw the fire, stopped and managed to rescue some old family photos that were hanging on the wall, before the whole place went up."
She said the man left without giving his name and the family wanted to thank him.
Mr Saunders was visiting friends at Ngahau, 30 minutes away, when he got a panicked phone call from his daughter.
"The reception was really bad and I wasn't sure what was going on until I got a text telling me the house was burning down. I jumped in the car and drove straight there. When I arrived it was too late to do anything."
He said the family-owned house was an 80-year-old kauri villa with a big veranda. Only the chimney and sheets of twisted roofing remained.
The house was insured but its contents weren't, Mr Saunders said.
He said he and his wife had been overwhelmed by support from locals - one person had dropped off a generator, another a barbecue.
"It got a bit much on Saturday so we went to the beach to escape everything. It's just absolutely devastating, I can't put it into words."
Fire investigators visited the site as they tried to find the cause.
The family are now living in the unscathed sleepout. Mr Saunders said it would give them a place to sleep until a replacement home was built.
- NORTHERN ADVOCATE
