Unexplained Fires Gut Two Auckland Homes

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29401, 31 December 1960, Page 14

Unexplained Fires Gut Two Auckland Homes

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, Dec. 30. Two houses less than a mile apart were gutted by fire within half an hour of each other at Epsom today. The cause of the fires was not known—but the Auckland t Fire Brigade executives immediately ordered an urgent inquiry. Mr G. Drummond, the Chief Fire Officer, said: “The fires may just be a coincidence —but the possibility cannot be ruled out that a firebug or burglars are responsible.”

The head inspecting officer, Mr M. Dowdle, visited the scene of the blazes—in Crescent road and St. Andrew’s road—early this morning.

Both housese were owned by middle-aged couples. One couple had just returned from holiday yesterday to negotiate a sale—and the other family were on holiday at Maraeti. In Crescent road, Mr and Mrs Paul Nod Well were asleep when the fire broke out.

The Nod Well house had just been sold and the agreements were to have been signed this morning. Mrs Nodwell awoke to hear "rain on the roof”—then realised it was the crackling of flames in the lotinge. Mr Nodwell said: “My wife screamed at me to wake up and call the fire brigade. “I rushed into the lounge to use the telephone—and was met by a wall of flame. The whole place seemed alight, “While my wife escaped. 1 raced down the drive to a neighbour and pounded on the door. By the time I had* got the fire brigade the whole libuse was ablaze.” Next door, Professor James Rutherford, of Auckland University, heard the house’s plastered cement-board walls exploding and also phoned the brigade. 1 Within minutes, the upper storey crashed into the lower rooms, where Mr and Mrs Nod well bad been sleeping. Flames and sparks shot 20 feet into the air. “We saved nothing—except our night-clothes,” Mr Nod well said from his daughter's home in Stanley avenue, Takapuna. Their 23-year-old son, Bruce, who lives in the house with them, was on holiday at. Stanmore Bay. Another son, Alan, was searching the ruins today in the hope of salvaging some of the family’s possessions. Among the items he found was a £2OO camera—an almost unrecognisable lump of molten metal.

Twenty minutes after the Crescent road outbreak, firemen rushed two engines to 72 St. Andrew’s road, where the threebedroomed, single-storey home of

Mr and Mrs Athol Hawkey was blazing out of control. Neighbours telephoned the couple at their Maraeti holiday bach—but when they returned at 5 a.m. their home was already a smoking, gutted skeleton of twisted beams and blackened debris. Mrs Hawkey, shocked and dazed, sipped tea on the lawn behind the house today while her husband met insurance representatives.

The family saved almost nothing from the wreckage. A fire brigade officer said both blazes appeared to have started in the livingroom. Electrical faults are not believgd to have been responsible.