Hutchinson described the family as \u201cso distraught and traumatised\u201d by their ordeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was so close to four people dying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The family had stood in 3C temperatures, wearing the T-shirts they had been sleeping in, watching their home burn.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was freezing,\u201d Hutchinson said, adding ice had formed on the fire truck windscreen and firefighters\u2019 breathing apparatus cylinders.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson said he was unsure what had woken the family but they reported having smoke alarms in the home.<\/p>\n
Firefighters were able to save vehicles parked near the house, although the keys were inside the home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tragic,\u201d Hutchinson said. \u201cAs a firefighter you don\u2019t really ever get used to seeing the despair, the loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is particularly true when it came to the irreplaceable \u201ctreasures\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe other side of the story is the personal side for the family that\u2019s lost everything now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crews cleared the scene about 6am, and a fire investigator is working to determine the cause.<\/p>\n
Firefighters extinguish the house fire. <\/p>\n
The callout was the third structure fire in three weeks for the Kaikohe brigade, following two house fires and a sleepout blaze.<\/p>\n
Hutchinson said another house fire about six to eight weeks ago had occurred less than 1km away, starting in a garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was late in the afternoon, the girl had come home from school, working inside doing her homework and the next minute the whole house was on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
The veteran firefighter, nearing 50 years of volunteering, said such incidents are a reminder fires can happen to anyone and underlined the importance of working smoke alarms.<\/p>\n
He said he had attended fatal fires sparked by everyday items, including phone chargers and candles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hutchinson described the family as \u201cso distraught and traumatised\u201d by their ordeal. \u201cThis was so close to four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,5837,4996,14772,12630,22857,19688,2109,32255,528,7572,1345,30616,146207,138334,111,43,139,529,69,6507,165,5157],"class_list":["post-471635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-battle","tag-blaze","tag-burning","tag-climbing","tag-escape","tag-escaped","tag-family","tag-familys","tag-far","tag-firefighters","tag-home","tag-kaikohe","tag-narrow","tag-narrowly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-overnight","tag-their","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471635","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=471635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}