Garden hoses stop fire spreading

30th November 2004

Two men armed only with garden hoses stopped a fire from destroying their homes as a neighbouring house on Napier's Marine Parade burst into flames in a gale which threatened a firestorm yesterday.

The fire was reported at 4.50pm by parade resident Bev Taylor, whose timely visit next-door ended with her helping a disabled neighbour get out of the house as the blaze erupted.

It was one of six emergencies for the fire service in Napier and Hastings in less than half an hour, and one of 15 fires in Hawke's Bay in a spate of 25 calls caused by wind in less than five hours.

The fire gutted the disabled woman's home, two doors south of the parade's intersection with Sale Street, and partly damaged the neighbouring homes of Bev and Lawrie Taylor, and another man who battled with a garden hose as flames came through a window into his own bedroom.

Today, Mrs Taylor was still aghast as she recalled the horror.

"It just happened so quick, I couldn't believe it."

Mrs Taylor often called on her neighbour, who suffers from emphysema, taking her for walks in her wheelchair before she bought a mobility scooter.

Lately, as the woman's health had not been so good, she would pop over twice a day.

Mrs Taylor said she went over about 4pm, planning to stay for about an hour. She had finished washing one of the woman's cardigans and returned inside when she noticed what appeared to be a small piece of plastic material burning on the floor near the elderly woman's feet as she sat on a couch-bed.

She noticed the fire only minutes before she had planned to return home.

``I don't think she'd seen it. I picked it up, took it out the back door and stamped on it to put it out,'' she said, but by the time she returned inside, so had the fire.

``There were flames around her feet. I said `get up, Pat, you've got to get out'.''

Mrs Taylor phoned 111 as she tried to put the fire out by using a mat to beat the flames but ``realised the fire was beyond my control ... it was time to get out''.

Flames tore through the house, fuelled by the gale-force westerly winds, engulfing it within a matter of minutes.

Mrs Taylor still managed to turn the gas off in the house, and received minor burns and had to inhale smoke before ensuring her neighbour was safely out.

As she took the shocked woman next door to her home, Mrs Taylor's husband was desperately spraying water from a garden hose on to the side of their house, only two metres away.

The heat broke windows, blistered paint and melted gutterings and drainpipes.

A neighbour on the other side was not so lucky. Fire burned through a wall and badly damaged one bedroom, and caused smoke damage to the rest of the house. He had been in the process of renovating the property.

Firefighters said it was fortunate the wind was a direct westerly because it pushed most of the flames and heat out the front.

Mrs Taylor said she had little sleep last night.

``I kept asking myself if there was anything else I could do. And I kept thinking what could have happened if I hadn't been there and noticed the fire.''

Her husband was in little doubt that without his wife's intervention ``we'd have lost her'' (the disabled neighbour).

The woman visited the scene this morning with Mr and Mrs Taylor, and gave Mrs Taylor a hug.

The neighbour was still wearing what she had been wearing yesterday.

``It's all I have,'' she said.

A fire crew already at a shed fire about 3km away in suburban Maraenui, raced to the scene yesterday and, according to Senior Station Officer Bryan Dunphy, knew it had trouble on its hands when it entered Marine Parade from the southern end and saw the smoke billowing almost horizontally across the parade towards the sea.

With four others calls in the region almost simultaneously, including a fatal crash southwest of Hastings, the crew was alone at the fire for some time before back-up arrived.

It was estimated that it was more than an hour before the situation was under control.

All crews remained at the scene until after 10pm, fearing the winds, gusting in parts of Hawke's Bay up to 140km/h, would reignite the fire.