Luck saves family

Photo: DANIEL MARKHAM

DAMAGE DONE: Fire safety officer Roy Warren examines a gutted house in Henderson. The occupants were lucky to escape with their lives, he says.

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Luck was all that saved a family of five when flames engulfed their Henderson home.

Fire safety officer Roy Warren says Kevin and Keri Charlie and their three young boys were asleep when flames ripped across an outside deck. The sound woke one son and they all got out safely before the blaze spread inside and gutted most of the house.

Mr Warren says things could have been a lot worse but for a dose of good fortune and the quick wits of their eldest boy, Kalani, 11.

"He was asleep on the couch," he says. "That's not where he'd normally be because the bedrooms are at the other end of the house. But he'd been lying there for most of the evening so his parents just left him.

"Just before 2.40am he woke up to the sound of the fire and saw it through the ranchslider.

"So he got up yelling and screaming and woke everyone up."

The Starforth Pl house rented by the family did not have a working smoke alarm and Mr Warren says the fire could easily have ended in tragedy.

"If that boy hadn't been sleeping in the lounge, I'd say this would have been a fatal," he says.

Many people still fail to heed the importance of having an alarm, Mr Warren says.

"When I arrived to do the investigation, several of the neighbours came out to ask what was going on. I asked if they had smoke alarms and nobody did," he says.

"The usual excuse is that they are waiting for the landlord to put them in. I just tell people they might be dead before that happens. My appeal to landlords is to make sure they install them.

"They're cheap and may even save the property, let alone the lives of the tenants."

The fire is not being treated as suspicious, although a cause has yet to be identified. The flames spread to two cars parked outside and one was nearly destroyed.

The house will probably have to be demolished and most of its contents cannot be salvaged.

Mr Warren says the Charlie family is now staying with relatives.

The family has insurance but is still struggling to come to terms with what happened.

"When they saw it in the daylight it was pretty shocking for them," Mr Warren says. "There were a lot of tears."

- © Fairfax NZ News