{"id":473109,"date":"2026-06-12T03:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T03:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/473109\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T03:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T03:50:11","slug":"otara-house-fire-three-fire-chiefs-battle-blaze-on-finlay-place-during-union-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/473109\/","title":{"rendered":"\u014ctara house fire: Three fire chiefs battle blaze on Finlay Place during union strike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">Fire and Emergency Te Hiku region manager Ron Devlin told the Herald the district commander and two assistant district commanders responded while waiting for volunteers to arrive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThe fire started during the New Zealand Professional Firefighters\u2019 Union one-hour strike. Career staff were not available to immediately respond due to their NZPFU industrial action.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Crews are battling a house fire Finlay Place in South Auckland. Photo \/ Jason Dorday\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Crews are battling a house fire Finlay Place in South Auckland. Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">Just after 2pm, he confirmed both houses were vacant and the fire was now under control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">A witness, who lives nearby, said he saw large plumes of white smoke, which kept getting darker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">When he went to see  where the smoke was coming from, he saw a house fully engulfed in flames about 3 metres high.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">Police handed out masks to nearby residents as a pungent smell of smoke spread across the area.<\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Authorities have closed streets near a house fire on Finlay Place in South Auckland's \u014ctara.\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Authorities have closed streets near a house fire on Finlay Place in South Auckland&#8217;s \u014ctara.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">Staff at Bairds Kindergarten, which is near the scene, said they had put all the children inside away from any smoke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">The fire broke out during the national firefighters\u2019  hour-long lunchtime strike.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">It\u2019s the third serious blaze to break out during the ongoing strike action this year in Auckland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\">In January, a pizza business was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/large-fire-breaks-out-in-east-auckland-building-as-firefighters-strike\/VWZXMYWJ6VEM5BSXTYZR7CG4R4\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">destroyed in a lunchtime blaze<\/a>. A month later, a North Shore school sports pavilion was razed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xRCtHSZoMFoDBmw\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/profile\/newsletters\/?from=cmp\">Sign up to Herald Premium editor\u2019s picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/subscription\/offers\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/my-account\/subscription\/offers\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fire and Emergency Te Hiku region manager Ron Devlin told the Herald the district commander and two assistant&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,51,5837,6632,4996,17909,2837,86829,103196,2079,34981,10053,111,43,139,69,90,6744,1240,5424,4485,33913,1529,1865,4483],"class_list":["post-473109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-battle","tag-battled","tag-blaze","tag-chiefs","tag-during","tag-engulfed","tag-finlay","tag-fire","tag-flames","tag-house","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-place","tag-south","tag-street","tag-strike","tag-tara","tag-three","tag-today","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473109","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=473109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}