The jury for the Loafers Lodge manslaughter trial have viewed the remnants of the budget accommodation building on Wellington’s Adelaide Road.
Five people died when a fire lit by Esarona Lologa tore through the building – with nearly 100 hundred residents inside – in May 2023.
The manslaughter trial of Gregory Bruce Mein, Barry Charles Collins, Glenn Brendan McAllister, and Marie Louise Murphy, for their roles in the maintenance and operation of the building, is in its third day in the High Court at Wellington.
During the tour on Wednesday, court staff pointed out to the jury parts of the building in relation to how they were described in evidential documents.
More than three years on from the fatal fire, the site is boarded up with plywood, spattered with graffiti and in varying states of decay.
Through the building’s upper windows, the sky is visible where the fourth floor mezzanine once was.
Here was where victims of the fire; Michael Wahrlich, Melvin Parun, Peter O’Sullivan, Kenneth Barnard and Liam Hockings all lived.
Outdated floor plans hamper rescue attempts
Back in the High Court, Fire and Emergency senior station officer Clark Townsley said he was the first senior officer to arrive at the fire and co-ordinated the initial response.
He told the court that, prior to the fire, firefighters’ discussions on how best to approach fires in dense, low socio-economic housing in Wellington used the Loafers Lodge site as an example.
On the night of the fire, Townsley and his crew were alerted to “smoke logging in a building” at 12:26am.
They left the Newtown Fire station about a minute and a half later.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Townsley said they could see smoke, but no flames, when they arrived at the scene at 12:30am.
He said he expected there were many people inside, and he called for more support.
Fire crews jostled by panicked residents
While fire-fighters were setting up breathing equipment, Townsley said he saw people streaming out of the entrance on the northern side of the building.
Panicked residents “abused, jostled and accosted” firefighters telling them the fire was on the third floor and there were people still inside.
Townsley called for police to help with the growing number of agitated people gathering outside the building.
Once inside, Townsley said he did not hear any main alarms and other fire-fighters commented as to how quiet it was on the top floors.
Heading up to the third floor, Townsley told the court he saw thick black smoke and determined that survivability for people on the level was “low but not impossible”.
He made the decision to attack the fire on that level “to give those residents the best chance”.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Back on the street, he encountered a man who said he had responsibilities relating to the building, he had access keys and warned him there could be up to 148 people staying in the hostel. That man would turn out to be accused, Glen McAllister.
“He wanted to go back in the building. I said ‘no way’ but I do need your keys,” Townsley said.
He told the jury the building’s alarm panels indicated fire was present in multiple areas that, in hindsight, were every where but where the fire actually was.
Another light indicated a potential defect in the system.
Firefighters unaware of the addition of mezzanine level to the building
Shortly before 1am, Townsley received a report that someone was trapped on the mezzanine level but said his crews didn’t know where that level was, or how to get there.
Soon after, he was told a person had jumped from the building and had landed on the roof of Zip Electrical next door, suffering a broken leg.
He said he assigned an aerial unit to reach people on the building’s roof and, seeing a person signalling from with a flashing light, directed crews to their location as well.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
“I was still receiving radio messages from the comms centre that people were trapped in the building and making calls to 111,” he said.
Crews inside reported deteriorating conditions and the potential for flashover and withdrew from the building.
“Flashover refers to the heat in area reaching such a temperature that all combustible materials can spontaneously combust. The heat could’ve been upwards of 1000 degrees. The survivability in these sorts of conditions is very low. Within a matter of seconds it can be fatal for even a fully kitted fire-fighter,” Townsley said.
He said a firefighter on the ladder of an aerial appliance reported “intense fire and structural collapse” inside the building.
Having avoided the flashover, fire-fighters targeted the blaze from outside – attempting to cool the building until a crew could be prepped to re-enter the structure to assess conditions.
On re-entering, a team of four firefighters found three bodies on the third floor.
Under cross examination from counsel for Greg Mein, Christopher Stevenson KC, Townsley acknowledged that the plans firefighters could see on their systems were actually from 2005 and contained no indication of the mezzanine floor.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
This lead to confusion when residents told 111 dispatchers they were stuck in that part of the building.
“If you had accurate plans showing the mezzanine and how you get up to it, that would’ve assisted you but you just didn’t have that info,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson said three people had broken through the mezzanine level’s skylight windows to escape the fire, while Liam Hockings had been trapped in a room on the mezzanine.
Stevenson put to Townsley that had firefighters known where the trapped people were, they would have attempted to rescue those people.
“If I had known they were there? Absolutely,” Townsley said.
Only centimetres on clear air on the fire floor
Senior firefighter Brady Cutting and firefighter Noel Wellington were tasked with fighting the fire at its source on level three.
Cutting said he had to crawl along the floor towards the fire source due to the low, hot smoke which burnt his ears through his protective equipment when he tried to stand.
Cutting said there was only a matter of about three centimetres of clear air above the floor.
“It was as if you were blind folded. Everything’s done by touch,” he said.
He said he received reports through his radio that there were people trapped in the building but did not know how to find them.
“Immediately after that an orange flame pulsed through the air behind us.
“The conditions were changing rapidly. The heat was unbearable we were lying on the floor simply to protect ourselves.”
As debris began to fall about them, they withdrew from the floor and told other firefighters not to enter.
Appearing by video link, Noel Wellington told the court he had attended a callout at Loafers Lodge before the fatal fire.
Having seen the nature of the building and its tenancy, Wellington told the court he was expecting a “worst case scenario” as his crew travelled towards the blaze.
Eight weeks have been set aside for the trial which continues tomorrow.