Graham McClung, a long-time friend of Davis, told the Herald he went to school with him and his three brothers in Whitianga.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mum was a good friend of their mother also. <\/p>\n
\u201cBen in particular was a great comedian and could always be found at the centre of a running joke about current events in the schoolyard or further afield. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was an all-around great guy, and he will be sadly missed by his old mates.\u201d <\/p>\n
After the fire, Thames-Coromandel Mayor Peter Revell told NZME the situation was \u201ctragic\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWharekaho is just such a beautiful part of the world, [a] beautiful part of our district.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tiny community, and for this to happen and for there to be a death as a result is tragic and it\u2019ll be being felt by the whole community. It\u2019s very sad.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district was used to adversity, and neighbours often supported each other, he said.<\/p>\n
He asked everyone in the community to check on their neighbours. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust see that they\u2019re okay as they cope with this tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emergency services were called to the blaze about 2.25am. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe body of a person was later discovered inside the address,\u201d Senior Sergeant Chris Painter said.<\/p>\n
Fire and Emergency spokesman Colin Underdown said the fire was \u201cwell involved\u201d and the response was initially upgraded to a second alarm fire.<\/p>\n
The blaze was extinguished about 4am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Graham McClung, a long-time friend of Davis, told the Herald he went to school with him and his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1558,3595,40367,22506,6179,11784,2079,12632,16773,10053,10136,111,43,139,69,675,15120,1337],"class_list":["post-628699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-been","tag-by","tag-comedian","tag-coromandel","tag-died","tag-fatal","tag-fire","tag-friend","tag-great","tag-house","tag-named","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-police","tag-remembered","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628699","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=628699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}