INFERNO The great fire of Auckland
The fire began at lunchtime on Tuesday and by home time, Auckland was at a standstill. Smoke poured from the blaze consuming the roof of the NZ International Convention Centre, a project already beset with controversy and delays. It now faces its biggest struggle yet — a rebuild. Kirsty Johnston reports on the fire that refused to die.
It appeared in the sky just after lunch — a great pall of black smoke against the grey backdrop of Auckland city. The foreman saw it as he came down the stairs from the unfinished roof of the vast construction site; then he saw flames licking at the newly laid bitumen, and ran to raise the alarm.
Mayor Phil Goff saw it as he sat in his office, and posted to social media at 1.13pm: “Huge fire at the SkyCity Convention Centre. Fire engines on route.”
Firefighter Martin Campbell saw it while attending another job at nearby Victoria St in and raced up the hill with his crew to the construction site, guessing it must have come from there.
“We didn’t wait,” he says. “There were three trucks of us at another callout just a minute down the road, and from there we could see a very large black plume coming from near the Sky Tower.”
When the fire crews arrived around 1.20pm, construction workers were pouring from the building on to the street below, wearing boots and high-visibility vests.
“S***, someone’s left a blow-torch on,” one said to another. “On the roof.”
The speculation spread rapidly through the group — it must have been one of the waterproofers laying the bitumen membrane in the building’s top west corner.
A team of 12 from MPM Waterproofing Services had been working there, using gas-powered torches to heat the bitumen. The story that rapidly emerged was that