Person in shower as electrical fire breaks out, spreads to three homes in Milldale, Auckland
A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said one of the occupants of the destroyed home was in the shower listening to music, so didn’t notice the fire break out.
“The neighbours went and knocked on the door and he didn’t respond.
“He came out and saw the fire and ran outside, and he couldn’t rescue his cats.”
No one was injured in the blaze, but neighbours told the Herald two cats had died.
Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, said the incident was “pretty traumatic”.
“It went so quick, they’ve been left with nothing.”
She was on a video call when she was first alerted to the fire after she heard a car beeping and people shouting.
“I came out to see what was happening, and the flames were massive in front of the house.
“There were a couple of explosions … we started shouting to our neighbours over here, ‘Get out. We need to get out’.”
When she began to feel the heat from the blaze from inside her own home, she realised she needed to evacuate.
“I noticed that in the house next to us, smoke started to billow out the roof because it had gone inside of their house … and then started to look like it was coming into our house.
“So I started trying to just grab stuff and get it out of our house, and then the whole neighbourhood started helping me.”
Her house was spared from the flames in the end with the fire contained by 12.42pm. Fire and Emergency said crews remained on site to extinguish remaining hotspots until around 7pm.
A Fire and Emergency spokesperson said today that the fire was electrical.
“The fire was identified as starting where a motorbike battery was charging.
“Due to fire damage, fire investigators can’t determine whether the cause was the battery or the charger. The battery is not a lithium-ion battery.”
The metal skeleton of a burnt motorbike remains at the front of the property.
Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei.