This morning the area outside the home was cordoned off and several police officers were conducting door knocks at neighbouring properties. Fire and Emergency personnel were also at the scene. <\/p>\n
The neighbour said she was alerted to the blaze about 2.30pm by the large amount of smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cI smelt smoke … and I came out and there was just smoke barrelling out the side window, it was very black.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started banging my fence, yelling \u2018fire fire fire\u2019 to get my neighbours\u2019 attention and if anybody was in the house, to get their attention.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all in panic and just all immediately grabbed our hoses.\u201d<\/p>\n
She could hear the smoke alarm going off, and asked her daughter to call emergency services.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext minute, there was a smash and I looked to my left and saw flames coming out, which I know is a bedroom window.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another explosion followed the first, as other neighbours joined the firefight with their garden hoses. <\/p>\n
Police were conducting door knocks this morning after a fatal house fire in the black house (pictured centre). Photo \/ Rafaella Melo<\/p>\n
The neighbour said she had to take cover behind her 1.8-metre fence to avoid getting hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe windows were glowing and then just exploded, I had to duck down with the protection of my fence … the glass just exploded and was hitting the fence and the ground started smoking.\u201d<\/p>\n
She had a sick feeling after learning someone had died. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just knew there was a gentleman that lived there, but I didn\u2019t know his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said because the fire was contained within the house, there was minimal damage to the surrounding properties other than a scorched tree behind the house.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Gemmell, who lives several houses down on Tamatea St, said the street was typically safe. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have got mokopuna running around, well, it\u2019s the holidays, it\u2019s an adventurous street.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has lived in the area for 11 years and was saddened by what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo find out that somebody has been killed, that\u2019s really sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t know the victim.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency referred Hawke\u2019s Bay Today to the police for investigation updates. <\/p>\n
Police said on Tuesday they were treating the fire as \u201cunexplained\u201d.<\/p>\n
The investigation is \u201congoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michaela Gower joined Hawke\u2019s Bay Today in 2023 and is based out of the Hastings newsroom. She covers Dannevirke and Hawke\u2019s Bay news and loves sharing stories about farming and rural communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning the area outside the home was cordoned off and several police officers were conducting door knocks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,806,5837,6632,23552,22529,11784,2079,8589,5194,42,19051,13481,10053,11285,101,424,43381,3244,43,13744,40,38,41,39,5157,102,1354],"class_list":["post-51407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-as","tag-battle","tag-battled","tag-claimed","tag-explode","tag-fatal","tag-fire","tag-garden","tag-hastings","tag-headlines","tag-hose","tag-hoses","tag-house","tag-learning","tag-left","tag-life","tag-mahora","tag-neighbours","tag-news","tag-shock","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-windows","tag-with","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51407","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=51407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}