Fatal fire: Tip claimed local bore grudge

Police investigating an Auckland house fire that claimed four lives earlier chased an anonymous tip alleging it had been started by a person with a grudge, a Coroner’s report has revealed.

Bhamini Theiventhiran, 39, her 5-year-old son Bareth Kailesh and 66-year-old mother Umadhevi Theiventhiran all died in the blaze in east Auckland’s Flat Bush in December 2016.

Theiventhiran’s 47-year-old husband Kaileshan Thanabalasingham was severely injured and died in hospital about one month later.

A coroner’s report into Theiventhiran’s death released yesterday found she died from burns and smoke inhalation.

The blaze was New Zealand’s worst house fire since the 1970s as Theiventhiran, her son and motherin-law were caught sheltering in the en suite bathroom of an upstairs bedroom.

But fire investigators say the family would likely have survived had they known to close internal doors — a measure that would have given firefighters time to reach them.

“Tragically, our investigation shows that if they had closed the doors, the intense heat and toxic smoke from the fire probably wouldn’t have reached them,” Fire and Emergency’s fire investigation national manager Peter Wilding said.

Coroner Sarn Herdson said investigators had determined the fatal blaze likely began as a smouldering fire in lounge room furniture or a rug on the ground floor of the two-storey house.

The possibility it was caused by an ember from a cigarette could not be proven but could also not be ruled out, she said.

The fire was not deemed deliberate.

However, earlier in the investigation, police had chased a lead in which they were given an anonymous note “alleging a local person may have been responsible for starting the fire”.

The note said the person had been seen outside Theiventhiran’s home the day after the fire and that they had earlier been unsuccessful in buying the house and so held a grudge against the family.

“Police investigated the allegation but found no evidence to support [it], or to support a finding that the fire was suspicious,” Coroner Herdson said.

All the family members who slept upstairs died as a result of the fire.

However, Theiventhiran’s father Theiventhiran Vinasathamey and her daughter Krishah Mantra Kaileshan had been sleeping on the ground floor and escaped.