Taupo¯ house goes up in flames
Keith Aldridge had no idea his Taupo¯ house was on fire until someone told him.
‘‘I’d say it’s buggered now,’’ he said from the footpath outside his still smouldering Arrowsmith Ave home.
Aldridge wasn’t long out of bed when he saw smoke blowing around 11am yesterday. The gravity of his situation didn’t hit him until someone nearby piped up.
‘‘He said, ‘I think your house is on fire, mate’,’’ Aldridge recalled. ‘‘I didn’t think it was, I thought it was [smoke] outside coming in.’’
The fire might have started in the bedroom, he said, but he couldn’t be sure.
Aldridge, as well as others in the upmarket Taupo¯ street, could do little but watch as four fire crews battled to extinguish the blaze after the 11.09am emergency call.
Bystander Frank Burlace said the glass blew out of the windows and made ‘‘a bloody big bang’’.
He’d never seen anything like it.
The black smoke caught Burlace’s attention as he pottered in the garden.
He ran outside, up the road and, after discovering no-one was inside, stood back and watched. There was nothing he could do. ‘‘It was too far gone. The heat was so great I had to get out of it.
‘‘I could feel it from 20 yards up the road.’’
Four fire trucks responded to the fire and the house was ‘‘well ablaze’’ when fire crews arrived, Fire and Emergency northern communications shift manager Megan Ruru said.
Aldridge, a truck driver, was left wondering what to do with the remains of his home. He works nights and lived in the house during the week only while working in Taupo¯ . He and his wife usually reside in Tauranga.
The house was insured. He’ll probably knock it down and sell the land, he said.