Gas blast victims tell story of ‘hell’
A lit candle sparked a gas explosion that left a 26-year-old New Plymouth man in an induced coma. He wasn’t the only victim.
‘Ijust heard him scream,’’ Leticia Nixon says. ‘‘The whole room just went up in flames.’’ Nixon and her partner, Ben D’Ath, were settling in for the night at their Devon St West flat, while their downstairs neighbour, Kerry Roach, was relaxing on his couch with his french bulldog, Bella.
It was December 29 last year, and Nixon, 21, and D’Ath, 26, had just got home from dinner.
About 10.30pm, the couple, who have been in a relationship for almost a year, were getting ready for sleep. As Nixon snuggled up under the covers, D’Ath, well known locally as a photographer and videographer, lit a candle at the end of the bed.
‘‘Every night we’ll light a candle,’’ she explains. ‘‘It’s just what we do.’’
Instantly, the room erupted in flame as gas ignited.
Nixon heard D’Ath scream. Then she started screaming herself.
Her instant reaction was to pull the covers completely over herself.
‘‘I remember feeling the force of the fire. It felt like a blowtorch,’’ she says. ‘‘It just felt like hell. It was horrible. It was so quick.’’
Peeking out of the side of the covers, Nixon could see that one wall of the 120-yearold New Plymouth cottage was completely covered in flames. She flipped the blanket over and saw her partner standing at their flaming front door trying to get out.
‘‘The back of his shirt was on fire,’’ she says. ‘‘The whole room was on fire.’’
A lot of the experience is a blur, but she remembers running with Ben past their flaming kitchen and lounge to a door that led to the balcony.
‘‘I just remember pushing it with my leg and it fell,’’ she says. ‘‘The glass from the door had been blown out from the explosion.’’
From the balcony the pair faced a one-storey jump to a deck below.
‘‘I looked back and the whole house was engulfed in flames,’’ she says. ‘‘We were thinking, ‘We’re going to have to jump.’’’
That was when Nixon remembers seeing Roach, their neighbour, below them with a wooden ladder. Roach had been watching television when the explosion took place in the flat above.
‘‘I just saw the air suck in,’’ the 29-year-old senior barman at New Plymouth’s Rooftop Bar and Restaurant says. ‘‘Then I got blown back into the couch.’’
Roach threw up his right hand to protect his face as the gib board from his ceiling came crashing down. Within 10 seconds his house was filled with flames.
‘‘I was just like, wow. It all happened so quick,’’ Roach says. ‘‘Then it was like in those war movies when you hear ringing in your ears.’’
Roach ran outside, following Bella out through a door that had been blown off its hinges, and then he heard screaming from upstairs.
Roach looked around and spotted a wooden ladder, which was being used for renovations, leaning against the fence.
He grabbed it and put it up to the upstairs balcony, helping Nixon and D’Ath to escape.
‘‘We just had to climb off, climb down,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s crazy he had that ladder. I don’t know what we would have done.’’ Nixon had a few cuts from glass and minor burns, but her boyfriend was severely injured by the flames.
They ran to their neighbours, who got D’Ath into a bath of cold water. The paramedics arrived and put D’Ath in the shower, while another ambulance took her to Taranaki Base Hospital.
‘‘I pretty much just sat there shaking for I don’t know how long.’’
When D’Ath arrived at hospital he was taken to a separate room, but Nixon was able to see him.
She says he was talking but mainly crying. ‘‘He was more worried about me than himself.’’
The pair lost all of their belongings to the fire, and only have the pyjamas they were wearing when they ran out. ‘‘We didn’t even have shoes on.’’
Nixon, who works at Hallenstein Brothers, says D’Ath had smelt gas earlier in the evening. He had asked her if she could smell it, but she could not.
‘‘We just kind of didn’t really think about it – you would never have thought that could happen to you.’’
Nixon says she was told by either the doctors or police the gas was ‘‘so strong’’ that the smell alone suggests they would have eventually suffered asphyxiation. ‘‘They said, ‘If you guys had gone to sleep, you wouldn’t have woken back up.’’’
Roach had also smelt gas earlier in the day, but says it had gone by the evening. His hand is burnt, as are parts of his head, and he is still having nightmares and waking up screaming.
Bella’s fur is singed, and she won’t go near the property – and neither will her owner.
Roach has promised himself never to go back to the house again. Walking through the charred home, the smell of smoke is unmissable with every breath. Within its black walls just skeletons of dining room chairs, televisions and couches remain. What’s left of the rooms D’Ath, Nixon and Roach sat in on that Tuesday night is a stark reminder of how truly lucky they were.
‘‘I’m pretty traumatised, pretty shocked that the whole thing happened – it’s not something you’d ever expect,’’ Roach says. ‘‘We [he and Bella] both survived. It can only get better from here.’’
He is just glad everyone got out alive. ‘‘I don’t feel I’m a hero, though. I just did what I hope anyone would do.’’
He says D’Ath had been apologising for lighting the candle when he was in hospital, but Roach says it wasn’t his fault.
Roach and his stepmother, Carol Thompson, who owns the cottage, say the gas had leaked into the house from the main pipeline.
‘‘I remember feeling the force of the fire. It felt like a blowtorch. It just felt like hell. It was horrible. It was so quick.’’ Leticia Nixon
WorkSafe New Zealand, the Crown agency that regulates workplace health and safety, is investigating because Energy Safety, the regulator for ensuring the safe supply and use of electricity and gas, is part of its organisation.
In an emailed statement, a WorkSafe spokeswoman said she is unable to provide any more information as the investigation is under way.
Powerco gas operations manager Don Elders says it is not appropriate to comment while the investigation is ongoing.
However, Elders confirmed that emergency services had alerted Powerco, and the company’s crew attended the next morning and immediately isolated the gas supply. Thompson says the fire is a landlord’s worst nightmare.
‘‘It’s shocking, absolutely shocking,’’ Thompson says. ‘‘You can never prepare yourself for something like this.’’
Thompson says she knows D’Ath well and had rented the home to him for that reason.
‘‘I really feel for Ben,’’ she says. ‘‘I’m always thinking of him.’’
Roach had contents insurance, but nowhere near the value of everything he lost.
He says it was a similar situation regarding the insurance on the house, especially with the renovations that had recently been completed.
As for the couple, Nixon says D’Ath had contents insurance, but she had none – other than phone insurance.
D’Ath remains in an induced coma in Waikato Hospital, and will do for weeks to come as his airways are inflamed. He will need skin grafts for some of the burns on his hands, back and face. Nixon is at D’Ath’s bedside. She has been back to visit the house – she wishes she hadn’t.
She’s still feeling very shaken. ‘‘It’s hard to feel lucky,’’ she says.