{"id":618920,"date":"2026-10-02T23:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T23:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/618920\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T23:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T23:54:09","slug":"gisborne-house-fire-passerby-pulls-elderly-man-from-burning-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/618920\/","title":{"rendered":"Gisborne house fire: Passerby pulls elderly man from burning home"},"content":{"rendered":"
It was expected the man would be released from hospital today.<\/p>\n
\u201cA passerby saw the fire, broke a window and hauled the man out to safety,\u201d Lister said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe probably saved his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
A passerby broke the left window in this picture to get to an elderly man inside the burning house. Photo \/ Murray Robertson<\/p>\n
The Gisborne Herald spoke to a neighbouring couple, who wished to remain anonymous, who saw most of what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were woken by the sound of a loud car horn at the time the fire started.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person in that car told us when we went out to see what was happening that he saw smoke from the fire billowing when he crossed the Roebuck Road Bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bridge is about three blocks away.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe drove over to where the fire was, stopped outside, and could see the elderly man inside the house.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he broke a front window and got him out,\u201d the neighbour said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy who rescued him told me his wife, who was with him, was telling him, \u2018You\u2019re going to hurt him, you\u2019re going to hurt him\u2019. … but the guy replied, \u2018It was either that or the elderly man was going to die in there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The rescuer told the neighbours the elderly man was clearly disoriented.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe firefighters who dealt with the fire were so professional,\u201d the neighbour said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fire started at the rear of the house.<\/p>\n
A specialist fire investigator was at the scene this morning to establish the cause of the fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was expected the man would be released from hospital today. \u201cA passerby saw the fire, broke a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46300,14772,2245,15453,2079,71,12506,305,1345,10053,2944,424,5158,1304,111,43,139,69,3111,304756,45641,28221,17162,1961,1316,14451],"class_list":["post-618920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-broke","tag-burning","tag-early","tag-elderly","tag-fire","tag-from","tag-gisborne","tag-have","tag-home","tag-house","tag-inside","tag-life","tag-man","tag-morning","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-out","tag-passerby","tag-passing","tag-pulls","tag-saved","tag-this","tag-when","tag-window"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618920","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=618920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}