While van der Slot-Verhoeven smelled smoke the night before, she thought it was from her wood burner.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we woke up, we had no idea what was happening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Van der Slot-Verhoeven said the wood burner was out and there were no flames, so she could not figure out why the detector was blaring.<\/p>\n
That was until she noticed smoke coming out from under her deck. Van der Slot-Verhoeven called 111.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe absolute[ly] fabulous firefighters from Avalon were there really quickly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTurned out the floor and beams under the fireplace were smouldering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van der Slot-Verhoeven said the fire had already burned through one joist.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow this all happened is a mystery, as the wood burner was not cracked at the bottom,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an old fellow, but installed correctly and maintained every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van der Slot-Verhoeven was concerned that her smoke alarm had not gone off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe smouldering was just under our bed basically.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could have been so much worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, our family is safe and sound … a scary night, and quite some material damage, but we can solve that.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Fire and Emergency told RNZ that a smoke alarm would provide a wider coverage of the hazardous products created in a fire.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile a carbon monoxide detector did provide an early warning in this case, this is rare and we would usually see smoke present even when a fire is smouldering,\u201d Fire and Emergency said.<\/p>\n
It recommended people have a smoke alarm in every bedroom, living room and hallway.<\/p>\n
Fires increase by 29% during winter<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency said the number of fires related to heating increased by 29% during winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important that people keep any flammable objects, like couches, clothes and beds at least a metre from heaters, wood burners and open fires.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also recommended having a wood burner checked and serviced regularly, especially older ones, and having the chimney swept every year.<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While van der Slot-Verhoeven smelled smoke the night before, she thought it was from her wood burner. \u201cWhen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[216971,95,3013,3043,40605,15974,23966,2079,63,2082,40370,40148,193026,111,43,139,69,384,26809,312,3948,61],"class_list":["post-431860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-alarms","tag-and","tag-but","tag-call","tag-carbon","tag-emergency","tag-enough","tag-fire","tag-fires","tag-for","tag-gordon","tag-install","tag-monoxide","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-pretoria","tag-says","tag-smoke","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}